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THE WISDOM OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE WISDOM 

OF 

ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

BEING EXTRACTS FROM 
THE SPEECHES, STATE 
PAPERS, AND LETTERS OF 
THE GREAT PRESIDENT 



"... his clear-grained human worth 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity " 
. — Lowell 



NEW YORK 

A. WESSELS COMPANY 
1908 



Orf'^ 



HI 



Copyrighted 1908 

A. Wessels Company 

New York 



September, 1908 






Lto 



PREFACE 

\TOST books of selections from the 
writings and conversations of 
Abraham Lincoln are designed primarily 
to show the peculiarities of his unique 
personality. Composed largely of his 
humorous stories, his witty and satirical 
comments upon his contemporaries, and 
anecdotes revealing the eccentricities of 
his genius, they uniformly produce a cari- 
cature of the accidental rather than essen- 
tial features of him who stands as the 
ideal type of American manhood. 

In this anthology this limited and thor- 
oughly culled field has been avoided, and 
the broader domain of Lincoln's genius 
explored to find the fruits of his ripened 
wisdom rather than the flowers of his 
brilliant and pungent personality. The 
mind and the soul of the man are shown, 
possibly too purely and severely. Yet 



while softening details are lacking in this 
portrait, all the strong and well-beloved 
lineaments of Lincoln are preserved, — 
each line as he himself drew it. Every 
passage is authentic and authoritative, 
the source and date of its utterance being 
given. The extracts are arranged in 
chronological order. The index of the 
book is by subjects. 

The compiler acknowledges with thanks 
permission given him by the Current Lit- 
erature Publishing Company to use the 
text of its Centenary Edition of the Life 
and Works of Abraham Lincoln in making 
the extracts. 

Marion Mills Miller. 



THE FIRST AMERICAN 

Extract from Ode recited at tfie Harvard Commem- 
oration, July 21, i8bs 

By James Russell Lowell 



W 



HITHER leads the path 
To ampler fates that leads? 
Not down through flowery meads, 

To reap an aftermath 
Of youth's vainglorious weeds; 
But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way. 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. 
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath. 
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 

Dreams in its easeful sheath ; 
But some day the live coal behind the thought, 
Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 
Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought. 
Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was 
fraught. 



And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of 

men : 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
And cries reproachful : " Was it, then, my 

praise, 
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy 

truth ; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! " 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 
So bountiful is Fate ; 
But then to stand beside her. 
When craven churls deride her. 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield. 
This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid 

earth. 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth. 
Fed from within with all the strength he 
needs. 



Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head, 

Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
viii 



Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored 
urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote : 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she 
threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 
How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to 

lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill. 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again 
and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars. 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
ix 



Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 

Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind, 

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest 

stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 

Ere any names of Serf and Peer 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will; 
Here was a type of the true elder race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 
I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a 

tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing 
man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 
X 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The First American : Extract from Har- 
vard Commemoration Ode, by James Russell 

Lowell vii 

Extracts from Lincoln's Writings 
AND Speeches : 
Announcement of Candidacy for Legislature i 
Speech in Legislature on the State Bank . i 
Address on the Perpetuation of our Political 

Institutions 2 

Speech against the Van Buren Administra- 
tion 4 

Address to Washingtonian (Temperance) 

Society 5 

Letter to George E. Pickett 8 

Notes on Protection 9 

Letter to Williamson Durley 11 

Letter to William Johnston with Poem . . 11 
Letter to William Johnston with Poem . . 13 
Speech in Congress Arraigning President 

Polk 15 

Letter to J. M. Peck 16 

Speech in Congress on Internal Improve- 
ments 16 

Note: " Were I President " 19 

Letter to William H. Herndon .... 19 
Speech in Congress on Military Heroes . . 20 
xi 



Extracts (Continued) page 

Notes for Lecture on Niagara Falls ... 22 

Notes for Law Lecture 23 

Eulogy of Henry Clay 25 

Notes on Government 27 

Speech on Repeal of Missouri Compromise 29 

Letter to George Robertson 40 

Letter to Joshua F. Speed 42 

Speech at First Republican Convention . . 43 

Speech at Galena 44 

Speech in Fremont Campaign 46 

Speech at Republican Banquet in Chicago . 46 

Reply to Douglas at Springfield .... 48 

Speech Accepting Nomination for Senator . 52 

Reply to Douglas at Chicago 54 

Speech at Springfield on Douglas's Presiden- 
tial Aspirations 59 

Speech at Lewiston 60 

Speech at Clinton 61 

Speech at Paris 61 

Speech at Edwardsville 61 

Debate with Douglas at Jonesboro ... 62 

Debate with Douglas at Charleston ... 65 

Debate with Douglas at Galesburg ... 66 

Debate with Douglas at Quincy . . . . yo 

Debate with Douglas at Alton 72 

Letter to J. J. Crittenden 76 

Letter to Dr. A. G. Henry 76 

Letter to H. D. Sharpe 76 

Letter to Jefferson Dinner Committee of 

Boston 76 

Letter to M. W. Delahay 79 

Letter to Dr. Theodore Canisius .... 80 

Letter to Samuel Galloway 80 

Speech at Columbus 82 

xii 



Extracts (Continued) page 

Speech at Cincinnati 2i^ 

Address at Wisconsin Agricultural Fair . 89 

Speech at Leavenworth 95 

Lecture on Discoveries, Inventions, and 

Improvements 96 

Speech at Cooper Union 104 

Speech at Hartford 108 

Speech at New Haven 1 1 1 

Letter to C. H. Fisher 115 

Letter to William S. Speer 115 

Remarks at Indianapolis 116 

Remarks to the Indiana Legislature . . 1x6 

Remarks to Germans at Cincinnati . . . 117 

Remarks at Pittsburg 118 

Remarks at New York 120 

Remarks to the Senate of New Jersey . . 121 
Remarks in Independence Hall, Philadel- 
phia 122 

First Inaugural Address 122 

Message to Congress in Special Session . 126 

Letter to O. H. Browning 134 

Note to Major Ramsey 136 

First Annual Message to Congress . . . 136 

Letter to General Hunter 140 

Appeal to Border State Representatives . 141 

Address to Negro Deputation .... 142 

Letter to Horace Greeley 144 

Remarks to Chicago Church Delegation . 145 

Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation . 149 

Reply to Mrs. Gurney 149 

Meditation on the Divine Will .... 150 

Second Annual Message to Congress . . 151 

Letter to Miss Fanny McCullough . . . 153 

On Admission of West Virginia into Union 153 
xiii 



Extracts {Continued) page 
Message to Congress on United States 

Notes 154 

Letter to Workingmen of Manchester, 

England 154 

Letter to General Hooker 155 

Letter to Alexander Reed 157 

Letter to General Rosecrans 158 

Letter to Governor Andrew Johnson . . 158 

Proclamation of Fast Day 158 

Letter to Erastus Corning and Others . . 160 

Letter to Committee of Ohio Democrats . 160 

Letter to Governor Seymour 163 

Letter to James C. Conkling 164 

Dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery . . . 166 
Remarks to Committee of New York Work- 
ingmen 168 

Remarks at Baltimore Sanitary Fair . . 168 
Letter to Committee of Baptists .... 169 
Endorsement of Application for Employ- 
ment 170 

Remarks to 164th Ohio Regiment . . . 170 
Remarks on the Bible to Negro Delegation 171 
Remarks on Presidential Election at Sere- 
nade 171 

Letter to Mrs. Bixby 173 

Letter to Governor Fletcher 174 

Second Inaugural Address 175 

Letter to Thurlow Weed 176 

Remarks to an Indiana Regiment . . . 177 

Speech on Reconstruction 178 



THE WISDOM OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



FELLOW-CITIZENS: I presume you 
all know who I am. I am humble 
Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by 
many friends to become a candidate for the 
Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, 
like the old woman's dance. I am in favor 
of a national bank. I am in favor of the 
internal improvement system, and a high 
protective tariff. These are my sentiments 
and political principles. If elected, I shall 
be thankful; if not, it will be all the same. — 
Announcement of Candidacy for Legislature; 
March, 1832. 

T [AM] opposed to making an examination 
'- [of the State Bank] without legal authority. 
I am opposed to encouraging that lawless and 
mobocratic spirit, whether in relation to the 
Bank or anything else, which is already 
abroad in the land; and is spreading with 
rapid and fearful impetuosity to the ultimate 
overthrow of every institution, of every moral 
principle, in which persons and property have 



hitherto found security, — On Inquiry into 
Management of the State Bank; January, 
1837- 

AT what point shall we expect the approach 
•^^^ of danger [to our republican institu- 
tions]? By what means shall we fortify 
against it? Shall we expect some transat- 
lantic military giant to step the ocean and 
crush us at a blow ? Never ! All the armies 
of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with 
all the treasure of the earth (our own ex- 
cepted) in their military chest, with a Bona- 
parte for a commander, could not by force 
take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on 
the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. 

At what point then is the approach of 
danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever 
reach us it must spring up amongst us; it 
cannot come from abroad. If destruction be 
our lot we must ourselves be its author and 
finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live 
through all time or die by suicide. , , , 

Turn to that horror-striking scene at St, 
Louis, A mulatto man by the name of Mcin- 
tosh was seized in the street, dragged to the 
suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and 
actually burned to death; and all within a 
single hour from the time he had been a free- 
man attending to his own business and at 
peace with the world. 

Such are the effects of mob law, and such 
are the scenes becoming more and more fre- 



quent in this land so lately famed for love of 
law and order, and the stories of which have 
even now grown too familiar to attract any- 
thing more than an idle remark. 

But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What 
has this to do with the perpetuation of our 
political institutions?" I answer, "It has 
much to do with it." ... By such examples, 
by instances of the perpetrators of such acts 
going unpunished, the lawless in spirit are 
encouraged to become lawless in practice; 
and having been used to no restraint but 
dread of punishment, they thus become ab- 
solutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded 
government as their deadliest bane, they 
make a jubilee of the suspension of its opera- 
tions, and pray for nothing so much as its 
total annihilation. While, on the other hand, 
good men, men who love tranquillity, who 
desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their 
benefits, who would gladly spill their blood 
in the defense of their country, seeing their 
property destroyed, their families insulted, 
and their lives endangered, their persons 
injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that 
forebodes a change for the better, become 
tired of and disgusted with a government 
that offers them no protection, and are not 
much averse to a change in which they im- 
agine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, 
by the operation of this mobocratic spirit 
which all must admit is now abroad in the 
land, the strongest bulwark of any govern- 

3 



ment, and particularly of those constituted 
like ours — I mean the attachment of the 
people — may effectually be broken down 
and destroyed. ... At such a time, and 
under such circumstances, men of sufificient 
talent and ambition will not be wanting to 
seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and 
overturn that fair fabric which for the last 
half century has been the fondest hope of the 
lovers of freedom throughout the world. — 
The Perpetuation of our Political Institu- 
tions. A n address to the Young Men's Lyceum 
of Springfield, III.; January 27, 1837. 

\/f R. LAMBORN insists that the differ- 
^^ ^ ence between the Van Buren party and 
the Whigs is that, although the former some- 
times err in practice, they are always correct 
in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in 
principle; and, better to impress this propo- 
sition, he uses a figurative expression in these 
words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in 
the heel, but they are sound in the head and 
the heart." The first branch of the figure — 
that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in 
the heel — I admit is not merely figuratively, 
but literally true. Who that looks but for a 
moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, 
their Harringtons, and their hundreds of 
others, scampering away with the public 
money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot 
of the earth where a villain may hope to find 
refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they 
4 



are most distressingly affected in their heels 
with a species of "running itch"? It seems 
that this malady of their heels operates on 
these sound-headed and honest-hearted crea- 
tures very much like the cork leg in the comic 
song did on its owner; which, when he had 
once got started on it, the more he tried to 
stop it, the more it would run away. At the 
hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I 
will relate an anecdote which seems too strik- 
ingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish 
soldier, who was always boasting of his 
bravery when no danger was near, but who 
invariably retreated without orders at the first 
charge of an engagement, being asked by his 
captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I 
have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever 
had ; but, somehow or other, whenever danger 
approaches, my cowardly legs will run away 
with it." — Against the Suhtreasury and 
other Policies of the Van Bur en Administra- 
tion. Speech at Springfield, III.; December, 
1839. 

WHEN the conduct of men is designed to 
be influenced, persuasion, kind, un- 
assuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. 
It is an old and a true maxim "that a drop of 
honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." 
So with men. It you would win a man to your 
cause, first convince him that you are his 
sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey 
that catches his heart, which, say what he 

5 



will, is the great highroad to his reason, and 
which, when once gained, you will find but 
little trouble in convincing his judgment of 
the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause 
really be a just one. On the contrary, assume 
to dictate to his judgment, or to command his 
action, or to mark him as one to be shunned 
and despised, and he will retreat within him- 
self, close all the avenues to his head and his 
heart; and though your cause be naked truth 
itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, 
harder than steel, and sharper than steel can 
be made, and though you throw it with more 
than herculean force and precision, you shall 
be no more able to pierce him than to pene- 
trate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye 
straw. Such is man, and so must he be under- 
stood by those who would lead him, even to 
his own best interests. 

But it is said by some that men will think 
and act for themselves; that none will disuse 
spirits or anything else because his neighbors 
do; and that moral influence is not that 
powerful engine contended for. Let us ex- 
amine this. Let me ask the man who could 
maintain this position most stiffly, what com- 
pensation he will accept to go to church some 
Sunday and sit during the sermon with his 
wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, 
I'll venture. And why not? There would 
be nothing irreligious in it, nothing immoral, 
nothing uncomfortable — then whv not ? Is 
6 



it not because there would be something 
egregiously unfashionable in it? Then it is 
the influence of fashion; and what is the 
influence of fashion but the influence that 
other people's actions have on our actions — 
the strong inclination each of us feels to do 
as we see all our neighbors do? Nor is the 
■ nfluence of fashion confined to any particular 
thing or class of things; it is just as strong on 
one subject as another. Let us make it as 
unfashionable to withhold our names from 
the temperance cause as for husbands to wear 
their wives' bonnets to church, and instances 
will be just as rare in the one case as the other. 

Of our political revolution of '76 we are all 
justly proud. It has given us a degree of 
political freedom far exceeding that of any 
other nation of the earth. In it the world has 
found a solution of the long-mooted problem 
as to the capability of man to govern himself. 
In it was the germ which has vegetated, and 
still is to grow and expand into the universal 
liberty of mankind. But, with all these glori- 
ous results, past, present, and to come, it had 
its evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam 
in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long 
after, the orphan's cry and the widow's wail 
continued to break the sad silence that ensued. 
These were the price, the inevitable price, 
paid for the blessings it bought. 

Turn now to the temperance revolution. 
In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, 
7 



a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant 
deposed; in it, more of want supplied, more 
disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By 
it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. 
By it none wounded in feeling, none injured 
in interest; even the dram-maker and dram- 
seller will have glided into other occupations 
so gradually as never to have felt the change, 
and will stand ready to join all others in the 
universal song of gladness. And what a 
noble ally this to the cause of political free- 
dom; with such an aid its march cannot fail 
to be on and on, till every son of earth shall 
drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching 
draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day when 
— all appetites controlled, all poisons sub- 
dued, all matter subjected — mind, all-con- 
quering mind, shall live and move, the 
monarch of the world. Glorious consumma- 
tion ! Hail, fall of fury ! Reign of reason, all 
hail ! — Address to the Washingtonian Society 
of Springfield, III.; February 22, 1842. 

I HAVE just told the folks here in Spring- 
field on this I nth anniversary of the 
birth of him whose name, mightiest in the 
cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in the 
cause of moral reformation, we mention in 
solemn awe, in naked, deathless splendor, 
that the one victory we can ever call complete 
will be that one which proclaims that there 
is not one slave or one drunkard on the face 
of God's green earth. Recruit for this victory. 
8 



. . . Now, hoy, on your march, don't you go 
and forget the old maxim that "one drop of 
honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of 
gall." Load your musket with this maxim, 
and smoke it in your pipe. — Letter to George 
E. Pickett; February 22, 1842. 

IN the early days of our race the Almighty 
said to the first of our race, "In the sweat 
of thy face shalt thou eat bread"; and since 
then, if we except the light and the air of 
heaven, no good thing has been or can be 
enjoyed by us without having first cost labor. 
And inasmuch as most good things are pro- 
duced by labor, it follows that all such things 
of right belong to those whose labor has pro- 
duced them. But it has so happened, in all 
ages of the world, that some have labored, 
and others have without labor enjoyed a 
large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, 
and should not continue. To secure to each 
laborer the whole product of his labor, or as 
nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any 
good government. 

But then a question arises. How can a gov- 
ernment best effect this ? In our own country, 
in its present condition, will the protective 
principle advance or retard this object ? Upon 
this subject the habits of our whole species 
fall into three great classes — useful labor, 
useless labor, and idleness. Of these the first 
only is meritorious, and to it all the products 
of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, 

9 



while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon 
the first, robbing it of a large portion of its 
just rights. The only remedy for this is to, 
so far as possible, drive useless labor and 
idleness out of existence. And, first, as to 
useless labor. Before making war upon this, 
we must learn to distinguish it from the use- 
ful. It appears to me that all labor done 
directly and indirectly in carrying articles to 
the place of consumption, which could have 
been produced in sufficient abundance, with 
as little labor, at the place of consumption as 
at the place they were carried from, is useless 
labor. Let us take a few examples of the 
application of this principle to our own 
country. Iron, and everything made of iron, 
can be produced in sufficient abundance, and 
with as little labor, in the United States as 
anywhere else in the world; therefore all 
labor done in bringing iron and its fabrics 
from a foreign country to the United States 
is useless labor. . . . 

We may easily see that the cost of this use- 
less labor is very heavy. It includes not only 
the cost of the actual carriage, but also the 
insurances of every kind, and the profits of 
the merchants through whose hands it passes. 
All these create a heavy burden necessarily 
falling upon the useful labor connected with 
such articles, either depressing the price to 
the producer or advancing it to the consumer, 
or, what is more probable, doing both in part. 
. . , [Therefore] the abandonment of the pro- 



tective policy by the American government 
must result in the increase of both useless 
labor and idleness, and so, in proportion, 
must produce want and ruin among our 
people. — Notes on Protection jotted down 
while Congressman-elect ; December^ 1847. 

I HOLD it to be a paramount duty of us in 
the free States, due to the Union of the 
States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox 
though it may seem), to let the slavery of the 
other States alone; while, on the other hand, 
I hold it to be equally clear that we should 
never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or 
indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying 
a natural death — to find new places for it to 
live in, when it can no longer exist in the old. 
— Letter to Williamson Durley ; October 3, 
1845. 

MY childhood's home I see again, 
And sadden with the view; 
And still, as memory crowds my brain, 
There's pleasure in it too. 

O Memory ! thou midway world 

'Twixt earth and paradise, 
Where things decayed and loved ones lost 

In dreamy shadows rise, 

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, 

Like scenes in some enchanted isle 
All bathed in liquid light. 



As dusky mountains please the eye 

When twilight chases day; 
As bugle-notes that, passing by, 

In distance die away; 

As leaving some grand waterfall, 

We, lingering, list its roar — 
So memory will hallow all 

We've known, but know no more. 

Near twenty years have passed away 

Since here I bid farewell 
To woods and fields, and scenes of play, 

And playmates loved so well. 

Where many were, but few remain 

Of old familiar things; 
But seeing them, to mind again 

The lost and absent brings. 

The friends I left that parting day, 
How changed, as time has sped ! 

Young childhood grown, strong manhoqd 
gray, 
And half of all are dead. 

I hear the loved survivors tell 

How naught from death could save 

Till every sound appears a knell, 
And every spot a grave. 

I range the fields with pensive tread. 

And pace the hollow rooms. 
And feel (companion of the dead) 

I'm living in the tombs. 

Letter to William Johnston ; April iS, 1846. 
12 



FRIEND JOHNSTON— You remember 
when I wrote you from Tremont last 
spring, sending you a little canto of what I 
called poetry, I promised to bore you with 
another some time. I now fulfill the promise. 
The subject of the present one is an insane 
man; his name is Matthew Gentry. He is 
three years older than I, and when we were 
boys we went to school together. He was 
rather a bright lad, and the son of the rich 
man of a very poor neighborhood. At the 
age of nineteen he unaccountably became 
furiously mad, from which condition he grad- 
ually settled down into harmless insanity. 
When, as I told you in my other letter, I 
visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I 
found him still lingering in this wretched con- 
dition. In my poetizing mood, I could not 
forget the impression his case made upon me. 
Here is the result: 

But here's an object more of dread 
Than aught the grave contains — 

A human form with reason fled, 
While wretched life remains. 

When terror spread, and neighbors ran 
Your dangerous strength to bind, 

And soon, a howling, crazy man, 
Your limbs were fast confined: 

How then you strove and shrieked aloud, 
Your bones and sinews bared; 

And fiendish on the gazing crowd 
With burning eyeballs glared; 

13 



And begged and swore, and wept and prayed, 

With maniac laughter joined; 
How fearful were these signs displayed 

By pangs that killed the mind ! 

And when at length the drear and long 

Time soothed thy fiercer woes, 
How plaintively thy mournful song 

Upon the still night rose ! 

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed, 

Far distant, sweet and lone. 
The funeral dirge it ever seemed 

Of reason dead and gone. 

To drink its strains I've stole away, 

All stealthily and still. 
Ere yet the rising god of day 

Had streaked the eastern hill. 

Air held her breath; trees with the spell 
Seemed sorrowing angels round. 

Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell 
Upon the listening ground. 

But this is past, and naught remains 
That raised thee o'er the brute; 

Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strain 
Are like, forever mute. 

Now fare thee well ! More thou the cause 

Than subject now of woe. 
All mental pangs by time's kind laws 

Hast lost the power to know. 

14 



O death ! thou awe-inspiring prince 

That keepst the world in fear, 
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence, 

And leave him lingering here? 
Letter to William Johnston; September 6, 1846. 

IF he [President Polk] can show that the soil 
was ours where the first blood of the war 
was shed, then I am with him. . . . But if 
he can not or will not do this, — if on any 
pretense or no pretense he shall refuse or 
omit it, — then I shall be fully convinced of 
what I more than suspect already, — that he 
is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; 
that he feels the blood of this war, like the 
blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against 
him; that originally having some strong mo- 
tive — what, I will not stop now to give my 
opinion concerning — to involve the two 
countries in a war, and trusting to escape 
scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the 
exceeding brightness of military glory, — 
that attractive rainbow that rises in showers 
of blood — that serpent's eye that charms to 
destroy, — he plunged into it, and has swept 
on and on till, disappointed in his calculation 
of the ease with which Mexico might be sub- 
dued, he now finds himself he knows not 
where. How like the half-insane mumbling 
of a fever dream is the whole war part of his 
late message ! . . . His mind, taxed beyond 
its power, is running hither and thither, like 

15 



some tortured creature on a burning surface, 
finding no position on which it can settle down 
to be at ease. . . . He is a bewildered, con- 
founded, and miserably perplexed man. God 
grant he may be able to show there is not 
something about his conscience more painful 
than all his mental perplexity. — Speech in 
Congress; January 12, 1848. 



POSSIBLY you consider those acts [of ag- 
gression upon the Mexicans] too small 
for notice. Would you venture to so consider 
them had they been committed by any nation 
on earth against the humblest of our people? 
I know you would not. Then I ask, is the 
precept "Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them" 
obsolete ? of no force ? of no application ? — 
Letter to J. M. Peck; May 21, 1848. 



BUT suppose, after all, there should be 
some degree of inequality [in the govern- 
ment making internal improvements through- 
out the various States]. Inequality is certainly 
never to be embraced for its own sake; but is 
every good thing to be discarded which may 
be inseparably connected with some degree 
of it ? If so, we must discard all government. 
This capitol is built at the public expense, for 
the public benefit; but does any one doubt 
that it is of some peculiar local advantage to 
16 



the property-holders and business people of 
Washington? Shall we remove it for this 
reason ? And if so, where shall we set it down, 
and be free from the difficulty ? To make sure 
of our object, shall we locate it nowhere, and 
have Congress hereafter to hold its sessions, 
as the loafer lodged, "in spots about"? I 
make no allusion to the present President 
when I say there are few stronger cases in this 
world of "burden to the many and benefit to 
the few," of "inequality," than the presidency 
itself is by some thought to be. An honest 
laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, 
while the President digs abstractions at about 
seventy dollars a day. The coal is clearly 
worth more than the abstractions, and yet 
what a monstrous inequality in the prices! 
Does the President, for this reason, propose 
to abolish the presidency ? He does not, and 
he ought not. The true rule in determining to 
embrace or reject anything, is not whether it 
have any evil in it, but whether it have more 
of evil than of good. There are few things 
wholly evil or wholly good. Almost every- 
thing, especially of government policy, is an 
inseparable compound of the two; so that 
our best judgment of the preponderance be- 
tween them is continually demanded. On 
this principle the President, his friends, and 
the world generally act on most subjects. 
Why not apply it, then, upon this question? 
Why, as to improvements, magnify the evil, 
and stoutly refuse to see any good in them ? 
2 17 



Mr. Chairman, the President seems to 
think that enough may be done, in the way of 
improvements, by means of tonnage duties 
under State authority, with the consent of the 
General Government. Now I suppose this 
matter of tonnage duties is well enough in its 
own sphere. I suppose it may be efficient, 
and perhaps sufficient, to make slight improve- 
ments and repairs in harbors already in use 
and not much out of repair. But if I have any 
correct general idea of it, it must be wholly 
inefficient for any general beneficent purposes 
of improvement. I know very little, or rather 
nothing at all, of the practical matter of levy- 
ing and collecting tonnage duties; but I sup- 
pose one of its principles must be to lay a 
duty for the improvement of any particular 
harbor upon the tonnage coming into that 
harbor; to do otherwise — to collect money 
in one harbor, to be expended on improve- 
ments in another — would be an extremely 
aggravated form of that inequality which the 
President so much deprecates. If I be right 
in this, how could we make any entirely new 
improvement by means of tonnage duties? 
How make a road, a canal, or clear a greatly 
obstructed river? The idea that we could 
involves the same absurdity as the Irish bull 
about the new boots. "I shall niver git 'em 
on," says Patrick, "till I wear 'em a day or 
two, and stretch 'em a little." We shall never 
make a canal by tonnage duties until it shall 
i8 



already have been made awhile, so the ton- 
nage can get into it — Speech in Congress; 
June 20, 1848. 



WERE I President, I should desire the 
legislation of the countr)' to rest with 
Congress, uninfluenced by the executive in 
its origin or progress, and undisturbed by the 
\eto unless in very special and clear cases. — 
Yote; July, 1S4S. 



1 CANNOT but think there is some mis- 
take in your impression of the motives of 
the old men. I suppose I am now one of the 
old men; and I declare, on my veracity, 
which I think is good with you, that nothing 
could afford me more satisfaction than to 
learn that you and others of my young friends 
at home are doing battle in the contest, and 
endearing themselves to the people, and tak- 
ing a stand far above any I have ever been 
able to reach in their admiration. I cannot 
conceive that other old men feel differently. 
Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; 
but I was young once, and I am sure I was 
never ungenerously thrust back. I hardly 
know what to say. The way for a young man 
to rise is to improve himself every way he can, 
never suspecting that anybody wishes to 
hinder him. Allow me to assure you that 
suspicion and jealousy never did help any 



L^ 



man in any situation. There may sometimes 
be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man 
down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows 
his mind to be diverted from its true channel 
to brood over the attempted injury. Cast 
about, and see if this feeling has not injured 
every person you have ever known to fall 
into it. 

Now, in what I have said, I am sure you 
will suspect nothing but sincere friendship, 
I would save you from a fatal error. You 
have been a laborious, studious young man. 
You are far better informed on almost all 
subjects than I have ever been. You cannot 
fail in any laudable object, unless you allow 
your mind to be improperly directed. — Letter 
to William H. Herndon; July lo, 1848. 



A FELLOW once advertised that he had 
made a discovery by which he could 
make a new man out of an old one, and have 
enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow 
dog. Just such a discovery has General Jack- 
son's popularity been to you [Democrats]. 
You not only twice made President of him 
out of it, but you have had enough of the 
stuff left to make Presidents of several com- 
paratively small men since; and it is your 
chief reliance now to make still another. 

By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I 
am a military hero? Yes, sir; in the days of 
20 



the Black Hawk war I fought, bled, and came 
away. Speaking of General Cass's career 
reminds me of my own. I was not at Still- 
man's defeat, but I was about as near it as 
Cass was to Hull's surrender; and, like him, 
I saw the place very soon afterward. It is 
quite certain I did not break my sword, for 
I had none to break; but 1 bent a musket 
pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke 
his sword, the idea is he broke it in despera- 
tion; I bent the musket by accident. If Gen- 
eral Cass went in advance of me in picking 
huckleberries, I guess I surpassed him in 
charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any 
live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did; 
but I had a good many bloody struggles with 
the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted 
from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was 
often very hungry. Mr. Speaker, if I should 
ever conclude to doff whatever our Democratic 
friends may suppose there is of black-cockade 
federalism about me, and therefore they shall 
take me up as their candidate for the presi- 
dency, I protest they shall not make fun of 
me, as they have of General Cass, by attempt- 
ing to write me into a military hero. 

I have heard some things from New York; 
and if they are true, one might well say of your 
party there, as a drunken fellow once said 
when he heard the reading of an indictment 
for hog-stealing. The clerk read on till he got 
to and through the words "did steal, take, 

21 



and carry away ten boars, ten sows, ten shoats, 
and ten pigs," at which he exclaimed, "Well, 
by golly, that is the most equally divided gang 
of hogs I ever did hear of!" If there is any 
other gang of hogs more equally divided than 
the Democrats of New York are about this 
time, I have not heard of it. — Speech in Con- 
gress; July 27, 1848. 



THE mere physical of Niagara Falls is a 
very small part of that world's wonder. 
Its power to excite reflection and emotion is 
its great charm. . . . It calls up the indefinite 
past. When Columbus first sought this con- 
tinent — when Christ suffered on the cross — 
when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea 
— nay, even when Adam first came from the 
hand of his Maker: then, as now, Niagara 
was roaring here. The eyes of that species of 
extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of 
America have gazed on Niagara, as ours do 
now. Contemporary with the first race of 
men, and older than the first man, Niagara 
is strong and fresh to-day as ten thousand 
years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon, 
so long dead that fragments of their monstrous 
bones alone testify that they ever lived, have 
gazed on Niagara — in that long, long time 
never still for a single moment [never dried], 
never froze, never slept, never rested. — Notes 
for a Popular Lecture on Niagara Falls; July, 
1850. 

22 



I AM not an accomplished lawyer. I find 
quite as much material for a lecture in 
those points wherein I have failed, as in those 
wherein I have been moderately successful. 
The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man 
of every other calling, is diligence. Leave 
nothing for to-morrow which can be done to- 
day. Never let your correspondence fall be- 
hind. Whatever piece of business you have 
in hand, before stopping, do all the labor per- 
taining to it which can then be done. When 
you bring a common-law suit, if you have the 
facts for doing so, write the declaration at 
once. If a law point be involved, examine the 
books, and note the authority you rely on 
upon the declaration itself, where you are sure 
to tmd it when wanted. The same of defenses 
and pleas. In business not likely to be liti- 
gated, — ordinary collci tion cases, foreclos- 
ures, partitions, and the like, — make all ex- 
aminations of titles, and note them, and even 
draft orders and decrees in advance. This 
course has a triple advantage; it avoids omis- 
sions and neglect, saves your labor when once 
done, performs the labor out of court when 
you have leisure, rather than in court when 
you have not. Extemporaneous speaking 
should be practiced and cultivated. It is the 
lawyer's avenue to the public. However able 
and faithful he may be in other respects, 
people are slow to bring him business if he 
cannot make a speech. And yet there is not 
a more fatal error to young lawyers than rely- 

23 



ing too much on speech-making. If any one, 
upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim 
an exemption from the drudgery of the law, 
his case is a failure in advance. 

Discourage litigation. Persuade your 
neighbors to compromise whenever you can. 
Point out to them how the nominal winner is 
often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and 
waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer 
has a superior opportunity of being a good 
man. There will still be business enough. 

Never stir up litigation. A worse man 
can scarcely be found than one who does 
this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than 
he who habitually overhauls the register of 
deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon 
to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? 
A moral tone ought to be infused into the pro- 
fession which should drive such men out of it. 

The matter of fees is important, far beyond 
the mere question of bread and butter in- 
volved. Properly attended to, fuller justice 
is done to both lawyer and client. An exor- 
bitant fee should never be claimed. As a 
general rule never take your whole fee in 
advance, nor any more than a small retainer. 
When fully paid beforehand, you are more 
than a common mortal if you can feel the 
same interest in the case, as if something was 
still in prospect for you, as well as for your 
client. And when you lack interest in the 
case the job will very likely lack skill and dili- 
gence in the performance. Settle the amount 

24 



of fee and take a note in advance. Then you 
will feel that you are working for something, 
and you are sure to do your work faithfully 
and well. Never sell a fee note — at least not 
before the consideration service is performed. 
It leads to negligence and dishonesty — negli- 
gence by losing interest in the case, and dis- 
honesty in refusing to refund when you have 
allowed the consideration to fail. 

There is a vague popular belief that lawyers 
are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, be- 
cause when we consider to what extent con- 
fidence and honors are reposed in and con- 
ferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears 
improbable that their impression of dishonesty 
is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression 
is common, almost universal. Let no young 
man choosing the law for a calling for a mo- 
ment yield to the popular belief — resolve to 
be honest at all events; and if in your own 
judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, 
resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. 
Choose some other occupation, rather than 
one in the choosing of which you do, in ad- 
vance, consent to be a knave. — Notes for 
Law Lecture; July, 1850. 



MR. CLAY ever was on principle and in 
feeling opjposed to slavery. The very 
earliest, and one of the latest, public efforts 
of his life, separated by a period of more than 
fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual 

25 



emancipation. He did not perceive that on a 
question of human right the negroes were to 
be excepted from the human race. And yet 
Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into 
life when slavery was already widely spread 
and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I 
think no wise man has perceived, how it 
could be at once eradicated without produc- 
ing a greater evil even to the cause of human 
liberty itself. His feeling and his judgment, 
therefore, ever led him to oppose both ex- 
tremes of opinion on the subject. Those who 
would shiver into fragments the Union of 
these States, tear to tatters its now venerated 
Constitution, and even burn the last copy of 
the Bible, rather than slavery should continue 
a single hour, together with all their more 
halting sympathizers, have received, and are 
receiving, their just execration; and the name 
and opinions and influence of Mr. Clay are 
fully and, as I trust, effectually and endur- 
ingly arrayed against them. But I would also, 
if I could, array his name, opinions, and in- 
fluence against the opposite extreme — 
against a few but an increasing number of 
men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, 
are beginning to assail and to ridicule the 
white man's charter of freedom, the declara- 
tion that "all men are created free and 
equal." — Eulogy of Henry Clay; July i6, 
1852. 



26 



THE legitimate object of government is to '^ 
do for a community of people whatever 
they need to have done, but cannot do at all, 
or cannot so well do, for themselves, in their 
separate and individual capacities. In all 
that the people can individually do as well for 
themselves, government ought not to interfere. 

Equality in society alike beats inequality, 
whether the latter be of the British aristo- 
cratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. 
We know Southern men declare that their 
slaves are better off than hired laborers among 
us. How little they know whereof they speak ! 
There is no permanent class of hired laborers 
amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a 
hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday 
labors on his own account to-day, and will 
hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Ad- 
vancement — improvement in condition — is 
the order of things in a society of equals. As 
labor is the common burden of our race, so 
the effort of some to shift their share of the 
burden onto the shoulders of others is the 
great durable curse of the race. Originally a 
curse for transgression upon the whole race, 
when, as by slavery, it is concentrated on a 
part only, it becomes the double-refined curse 
of God upon his creatures. 

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; 
pure slavery has no hope. The power of hope 
upon human exertion and happiness is won- 
derful. The slave-master himself has a con- 
ception of it, and hence the system of tasks 
27 



among slaves. The slave whom you cannot 
drive with the lash to break seventy-five 
pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him 
to break a hundred, and promise him pay for 
all he does over, he will break you a hundred 
and fifty. You have substituted hope for the 
rod. And yet perhaps it does not occur to you 
that to the extent of your gain in the case, you 
have given up the slave system and adopted 
the free system of labor. 

If A can prove, however conclusively, that 
he may of right enslave B, why may not B 
snatch the same argument and prove equally 
that he may enslave A? You say A is white 
and B is black. It is color, then; the lighter 
having the right to enslave the darker? Take 
care. By this rule you are to be slave to the 
first man you meet with a fairer skin than 
your own. You do not mean color exactly ? 
You mean the whites are intellectually the 
superiors of the blacks, and therefore have 
the right to enslave them ? Take care again. 
By this rule you are to be slave to the first man 
you meet with an intellect superior to your 
own. But, say you, it is a question of interest, 
and if you make it your interest you have the 
right to enslave another. Very well. And 
if he can make it his interest he has the right 
to enslave you. 

The ant who has toiled and dragged a 
crumb to his nest will furiously defend the 
28 



fruit of his labor against whatever robber 
assails him. So plain that the most dumb and 
stupid slave that ever toiled for a master does 
constantly know that he is wronged. So plain 
that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, 
except in a plainly selfish way; for although 
volume upon volume is written to prove slav- 
ery a very good thing, we never hear of the 
man who wishes to take the good of it by 
being a slave himself. 

Most governments have been based, practi- 
cally, on the denial of the equal rights of men, 
as I have, in part, stated them ; ours began by 
affirming those rights. They said, some men 
are too ignorant and vicious to share in gov- 
ernment. Possibly so, said we; and, by your 
system, you would always keep them ignorant 
and vicious. We proposed to give all a 
chance; and we expected the weak to grow 
stronger, the ignorant wiser, and all better 
and happier together. 

We made the experiment, and the fruit is 
before us. Look at it, think of it. Look at it 
in its aggregate grandeur, of extent of country, 
and numbers of population — of ship, and 
steamboat, and railroad. — Notes on Govern- 
ment; July, 1854. 



I THINK, and shall try to show, that the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise is 
wrong — wrong in its direct effect, letting 
slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong 
29 



in its prospective principle, allowing it to 
spread to every other part of the wide world 
where men can be found inclined to take it. 

This declared indifference, but, as I must 
think, covert real zeal, for the spread of 
slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because 
of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. 
I hate it because it deprives our republican 
example of its just influence in the world; 
enables the enemies of free institutions with 
plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes 
the real friends of freedom to doubt our sin- 
cerity; and especially because it forces so 
many good men among ourselves into an 
open war with the very fundamental prin- 
ciples of civil liberty, criticising the Dec- 
laration of Independence, and insisting 
that there is no right principle of action 
but self-interest. 

When Southern people tell us they are no 
more responsible for the origin of slavery than 
we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is 
said that the institution exists, and that it is 
very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory 
way, I can understand and appreciate the 
saying. I surely will not blame them for not 
doing what I should not know how to do my- 
self. If all earthly power were given me, I 
should not know what to do as to the existing 
institution. My first impulse would be to free 
all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to 
their own native land. But a moment's re- 
30 



flection would convince me that whatever of 
high hope (as I think there is) there may be 
in this in the long run, its sudden execution 
is impossible. If they were all landed there 
in a day, they would all perish in the next ten 
days; and there are not surplus shipping and 
surplus money enough to carry them there 
in many times ten days. What then? Free 
them all, and keep them among us as under- 
lings? Is it quite certain that this betters 
their condition? I think I would not hold 
one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not 
clear enough for me to denounce people upon. 
What next? Free them, and make them 
politically and socially our equals. My own 
feelings will not admit of this, and if mine 
would, we well know that those of the great 
mass of whites will not. Whether this feel- 
ing accords with justice and sound judgment 
is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part 
of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill 
founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We 
cannot then make them equals. It does seem 
to me that systems of gradual emancipation 
might be adopted, but for their tardiness in 
this I will not undertake to judge our brethren 
of the South. 

When they remind us of their constitu- 
tional rights, I acknowledge them — not 
grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would 
give them any legislation for the reclaiming 
of their fugitives which should not in its 
stringency be more likely to carry a free man 

31 



into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws 
are to hang an innocent one. 

But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no 
more excuse for permitting slavery to go into 
our own free territory than it would for reviv- 
ing the African slave-trade by law. The law 
which forbids the bringing of slaves from 
Africa, and that which has so long forbidden 
the taking of them into Nebraska, can hardly 
be distinguished on any moral principle, and 
the repeal of the former could find quite as 
plausible excuses as that of the latter. 

Equal justice to the South, it is said, re- 
quires us to consent to the extension of slavery 
to new countries. That is to say, inasmuch 
as you do not object to my taking my hog to 
Nebraska, therefore I must not object to you 
taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is 
perfectly logical, if there is no difference be- 
tween hogs and negroes. But while you thus 
require me to deny the humanity of the negro, 
I wish to ask whether you of the South, your- 
selves, have ever been willing to do as much ? 
It is kindly provided that of all those who 
come into the world only a small percentage 
are natural tyrants. That percentage is no 
larger in the slave States than in the free. 
The great majority South, as well as North, 
have human sympathies, of which they can 
no more divest themselves than they can of 
their sensibility to physical pain. These 
sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern 
32 



people manifest, in many ways, their sens-^ 
of the wrong of slavery, and their conscious- 
ness that, after all, there is humanity in the 
negro. If they deny this, let me address them 
a few plain questions. In 1820 you joined 
the North, almost unanimously, in declaring 
the African slave-trade piracy, and in annex- 
ing to it the punishment of death. Why did 
you do this? If you did not feel that it was 
wrong, why did you join in providing that 
men should be hung for it ? The practice was 
no more than bringing wild negroes from 
Africa to such as would buy them. But you 
never thought of hanging men for catching 
and selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or 
wild bears. 

Again, you have among you a sneaking 
individual of the class of native tyrants known 
as the "Slave-Dealer." He watches your 
necessities^ and crawls up to buy your slave, 
at a speculatmg price. If you cannot help it, 
you sell to him; but if you can help it, you 
drive him from your door. You despise him 
utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, 
or even as an honest man. Your children 
must not play with his; they may rollick 
freely with the little negroes, but not with the 
slave-dealer's children. If you are obliged to 
deal with him, you try to get through the job 
without so much as touching him. It is com- 
mon with you to join hands with the men you 
meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the 
ceremony — instinctively shrinking from the 

3 33 



snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires 
from business, you still remember him, and 
still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon 
him and his family. Now why is this? You 
do not so treat the man who deals in corn, 
cotton, or tobacco. 

The doctrine of self-government is right, — 
— absolutely and eternally right, — but it 
has no just application as here attempted. 
Or perhaps I should rather say that whether 
it has such application depends upon whether 
a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, 
in that case he who is a man may as a matter 
of self-government do just what he pleases 
with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not 
to that extent a total destruction of self- 
government to say that he too shall not gov- 
ern himself? When the white man governs 
himself, that is self-government; but when 
he governs himself and also governs another 
man, that is more than self-government — 
that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why 
then my ancient faith teaches me that "all 
men are created equal," and that there can 
be no moral right in connection with one 
man's making a slave of another. 

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony 
and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by 
saying: "The white people of Nebraska are 
good enough to govern themselves, but they 
are not good enough to govern a few miserable 
negroes!" 

34 



Well ! I doubt not that the people of Ne- 
braska are and will continue to be as good as 
the average of people elsewhere. I do not say 
the contrary. What I do say is that no man 
is good enough to govern another man without 
that other's consent. I say this is the lead- 
ing principle, the sheet-anchor of American 
republicanism. 

Still further: there are constitutional re- 
lations between the slave and free States 
which are degrading to the latter. We are 
under legal obligations to catch and return 
their runaway slaves to them : a sort of dirty, 
disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a gen- 
eral rule, the slaveholders will not perform 
for one another. Then again, in the control 
of the government — the management of the 
partnership affairs — they have greatly the 
advantage of us. By the Constitution each 
State has two senators, each has a number of 
representatives in proportion to the number of 
its people, and each has a number of presi- 
dential electors equal to the whole number 
of its senators and representatives together. 
But in ascertaining the number of the people 
for this purpose, five slaves are counted as 
being equal to three whites. The slaves do 
not vote; they are only counted and so used 
as to swell the influence of the white people's 
votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly 
shown by a comparison of the States of South 
Carolina and Maine. South Carolina has six 
35 



representatives, and so has Maine; South 
Carolina has eight presidential electors, and 
so has Maine. This is precise equality so far; 
and of course they are equal in senators, each 
having two. Thus in the control of the gov- 
ernment the two States are equals precisely. 
But how are they in the number of their white 
people? Maine has 581,813, while South 
Carolina has 274,567; Maine has. twice as 
many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. 
Thus, each white man in South Carolina is 
more than the double of any man in Maine. 
This is all because South Carolina, besides 
her free people, has 384,984 slaves. . . . 
This principle, in the aggregate, gives the 
slave States in the present Congress twenty 
additional representatives, being seven more 
than the whole majority by which they passed 
the Nebraska bill. 

Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do 
not mention it to complain of it, in so far as 
it is already settled. It is in the Constitution, 
and I do not for that cause or any other cause, 
propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the 
Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully, and 
firmly. 

But when I am told I must leave it alto- 
gether to other people to say whether new 
partners are to be bred up and brought into 
the firm, on the same degrading terms against 
me, I respectfully demur. I insist that 
whether I shall be a whole man, or only the 
half of one, in comparison with others, is a 

36 



question in which I am somewhat concerned, 
and one which no other man can have a sacred 
right of deciding for me. If I am wrong in 
this — if it really be a sacred right of self- 
government in the man who shall go to Ne- 
braska to decide whether he will be the equal 
of me or the double of me, then, after he shall 
have exercised that right, and thereby shall 
have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of 
a man than I already am, I should like for 
some gentleman, deeply skilled in the myste- 
ries of sacred rights, to provide himself with a 
microscope, and peep about, and find out, 
if he can, what has become of my sacred 
rights. They will surely be too small for 
detection with the naked eye. 

But Nebraska is urged as a great Union- 
saving measure. Well, I too go for saving the 
Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would con- 
sent to the extension of it rather than see the 
Union dissolved, just as I would consent to 
any great evil to avoid a greater one. But 
when I go to Union-saving, I must believe, 
at least, that the means I employ have some 
adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska 
has no such adaptation. 

It hath no relish of salvation in it. 
It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one 
thing which ever endangers the Union. When 
it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The 
nation was looking to the forming of new 

37 



bonds of union, and a long course of peace and 
prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the 
whole range of possibility, there scarcely ap- 
pears to me to have been anything out of 
which the slavery agitation could have been 
revived, except the very project of repealing 
the Missouri Compromise. Every inch of 
territory we owned already had a definite 
settlement of the slavery question, by which 
all parties were pledged to abide. . . . 

In this state of affairs the Genius of Dis- 
cord himself could scarcely have invented a 
way of again setting us by the ears but by 
turning back and destroying the peace meas- 
ures of the past. The counsels of that Genius 
seem to have prevailed. The Missouri Com- 
promise was repealed; and here we are in 
the midst of a new slavery agitation, such, I 
think, as we have never seen before. Who 
is responsible for this? Is it those who resist 
the measure, or those who causelessly brought 
it forward and pressed it through, having 
reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must 
and would be so resisted? It could not but 
be expected by its author that it would be 
looked upon as a measure for the extension 
of slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of 
faith. 

Argue as you will and long as you will, this 
is the naked front and aspect of the measure. 
And in this aspect it could not but produce 
agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfish- 
ness of man's nature — opposition to it in 



his love of justice. These principles are in 
eternal antagonism, and when brought into 
collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings 
them, shocks and throes and convulsions must 
ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Com- 
promise, repeal all compromises, repeal the 
Declaration of Independence, repeal all past 
history, you still cannot repeal human nature. 
It still will be the abundance of man's heart 
that slavery extension is wrong, and out of 
the abundance of his heart his mouth will con- 
tinue to speak. 

Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as 
well as North, shall we make no effort to ar- 
rest this? Already the liberal party through- 
out the world express the apprehension "that 
the one retrograde institution in America is 
undermining the principles of progress, and 
fatally violating the noblest political system 
the world ever saw." This is not the taunt 
of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it 
quite safe to disregard it — to despise it ? Is 
there no danger to liberty itself in discarding 
the earliest practice and first precept of our 
ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make 
profit of the negro, let us beware lest we "can- 
cel and tear in pieces" even the white man's 
charter of freedom. 

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed 

in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn 

and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, 

of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from 

39 



its claims of "moral right" back upon its ex- 
isting legal rights and its arguments of "neces- 
sity." Let us return it to the position our 
fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace. 
Let us readopt the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and with it the practices and policy 
which harmonize with it. Let North and 
South — let all Americans — let all lovers of 
liberty everywhere join in the great and good 
work. If we do this, we shall not only have 
saved the Union, but we shall have so saved 
it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of 
the saving. We shall have so saved it that 
the succeeding millions of free happy people, 
the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed 
to the latest generations. — On the Repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise Si)eech at Peoria, 
III.; October i6, 1854. 



SINCE then [the Missouri Compromise of 
1820] we have had thirty-six years of ex- 
perience; and this experience has demon- 
strated, I think, that there is no peaceful 
extinction of slavery in prospect for us. The 
signal failure of Henry Clay and other good 
and great men, in 1849, to effect anything in 
favor of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, 
together with a thousand other signs, extin- 
guished that hope utterly. On the question of 
liberty as a principle, we are not what we have 
been. When we were the political slaves of 
King George, and wanted to be free, we called 
40 



the maxim that "all men are created equal" 
a self-evident truth, but now when we have 
grown fat, and have lost all dread of being 
slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy 
to be masters that we call the same maxim 
"a self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has 
not quite dwindled away; it is still a great 
day — for burning fire-crackers ! ! ! 

That spirit which desired the peaceful ex- 
tinction of slavery has itself become extinct 
with the occasion and the men of the Revolu- 
tion. Under the impulse of that occasion, 
nearly half the States adopted systems of 
emancipation at once, and it is a significant 
fact that not a single State has done the like 
since. So far as peaceful voluntary emancipa- 
tion is concerned, the condition of the negro 
slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the 
contemplation of a free mind, is now as fixed 
and hopeless of change for the better, as that 
of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. 
The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign 
his crown and proclaim his subjects free re- 
publicans sooner than will our American 
masters voluntarily give up their slaves. 

Our political problem now is, "Can we as a 
nation continue together permanently — for- 
ever — half slave and half free ? " The prob- 
lem is too mighty for me — may God, in his 
mercy, superintend the solution. — Letter to 
George Robertson; August 15, 1855. 



I ACKNOWLEDGE your rights and my 
obligations under the Constitution in re- 
gard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see 
the poor creatures hunted down and caught 
and carried back to their stripes and unre- 
quited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. 
In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low- 
water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to 
St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, 
that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio 
there were on board ten or a dozen slaves 
shackled together with irons. That sight 
was a continued torment to me and I see 
something like it every time I touch the Ohio 
or any other slave border. It is not fair for 
you to assume that I have no interest in a 
thing which has, and continually exercises, 
the power of making me miserable. You 
ought rather to appreciate how much the 
great body of the Northern people do crucify 
their feelings, in order to maintain their loy- 
alty to the Constitution and the Union. I do 
oppose the extension of slavery because my 
judgment and feeling so prompt me, and I 
am under no obligations to the contrary. If 
for this you and I must differ, differ we 
must. . . . 

You inquire where I now stand. That is a 
disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but 
others say there are no Whigs, and that I am 
an Abolitionist. When I was at Washington, 
I voted for the Wilmot proviso as good as 
forty times; and I never heard of any one 
42 



attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do 
no more than oppose the extension of slavery. 
I am not a Know-nothing; that is certain. 
How could I be ? How can any one who 
abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor 
of degrading classes of white people? Our 
progress in degeneracy appears to me to be 
pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declar- 
ing that "all men are created equal." We 
now practically read it "all men are created 
equal, except negroes." When the Know- 
nothings get control, it will read "all men are 
created equal, except negroes and foreigners 
and Catholics." When it comes to this, I 
shall prefer emigrating to some country where 
they make no pretense of loving liberty, — to 
Russia, for instance, where despotism can 
be taken pure, and without the base alloy 
of hypocrisy. — Letter to Joshua F. Speed; 
August 24, 1855. 

THE conclusion of all is, that we must 
restore the Missouri Compromise. We 
must highly resolve that Kansas shall he free! 
We must reinstate the birthday promise of 
the Republic ; we must reaffirm the Declara- 
tion of Independence; we must make good 
in essence as well as in form Madison's 
avowal that "the word slave ought not to 
appear in the Constitution"; and we must 
even go further, and decree that only local 
law, and not that time-honored instrument, 
shall shelter a slave-holder. We must make 

43 



this a land of liberty in fact, as it is in name, 
But in seeking to attain these results — so 
indispensable if the liberty which is our pride 
and boast shall endure — we will be loyal to 
the Constitution and to the "flag of our 
Union," and no matter what our grievance — 
even though Kansas shall come in as a slave 
State — and no matter what theirs — even 
if we shall restore the Compromise — we 

WILL SAY TO THE SOUTHERN DISUNIONISTS, 

We won't GO OUT of the Union, and you 
SHAN'T ! ! ! — Speech before the First Re- 
publican Convention, Bloomington, Illinois, 
May 29, 1856, as reported by Henry C. 
Whitney. 

YOU further charge us with being dis- 
unionists. If you mean that it is our 
aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself an- 
swer that it is untrue; for those who act with 
me I answer that it is untrue. Have you 
heard us assert that as our aim? Do you 
really believe that such is our aim? Do 
you find it in our platform, our speeches, our 
conventions, or anywhere ? If not, withdraw 
the charge. 

But you may say that though it is not our 
aim, it will be the result if we succeed, and 
that we are therefore disunionists in fact. . . . 
The only charge that could be made [against 
us] is that the restoration of the restriction of 
1820, making the United States territory free 
territory, would dissolve the Union. Gentle- 

44 



men, it will require a decided majority to pass 
such an act. We, the majority, being able 
constitutionally to do all that we purpose, 
would have no desire to dissolve the Union. 
Do you say that such restriction of slavery 
would be unconstitutional, and that some of 
the States would not submit to its enforce- 
ment? I grant you that an unconstitutional 
act is not a law; but I do not ask and will 
not take your construction of the Constitution. 
The Supreme Court of the United States is 
the tribunal to decide such a question, and 
we will submit to its decisions; and if you do 
also, there will be an end of the matter. Will 
you ? If not, who are the disunionists — you 
or we ? We, the majority, would not strive 
to dissolve the Union; and if any attempt is 
made, it must be by you, who so loudly stig- 
matize us as disunionists. But the Union, in 
any event, will not be dissolved. We don't 
want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it we 
won't let you. With the purse and sword, the 
army and navy and treasury, in our hands 
and at our command, you could not do it. 
This government would be very weak indeed 
if a majority with a disciplined army and navy 
and a well-filled treasury could not preserve 
itself when attacked by an unarmed, undis- 
ciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk 
about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, 
nothing but folly. We do not want to dis- 
solve the Union; you shall not. — Speech at 
Galena, Illinois; August, 1856. 

45 



RECURRING to the question, "Shall 
slavery be allowed to extend into United 
States territory now legally free?" This is a 
sectional question — that is to say, it is a 
question in its nature calculated to divide the 
American people geographically. Who is to 
blame for that? Who can help it? Either 
side can help it; but how? Simply by yield- 
ing to the other side; there is no other way; 
in the whole range of possibility there is no 
other way. Then, which side shall yield ? To 
this, again, there can be but one answer, — ■ 
the side which is in the wrong. True, we 
differ as to which side is wrong, and we boldly 
say, let all who really think slavery ought to 
be spread into free territory, openly go over 
against us; there is where they rightfully 
belong. But why should any go who really 
think slavery ought not to spread? Do they 
really think the right ought to yield to the 
wrong ? Are they afraid to stand by the right ? 
Do they fear that the Constitution is too weak 
to sustain them in the right? Do they really 
think that by right surrendering to wrong the 
hopes of our Constitution, our Union, and our 
liberties can possibly be bettered ? — Speech 
in Fremont Campaign; October, 1856. "* 

OUR government rests in public opinion. 
Whoever can change public opinion can 
change the government practically just so 
much. Public opinion, on any subject, always 
has a "central idea," from which all its minor 
46 



thoughts radiate. That "central idea" in 
our political public opinion at the beginning 
was, and until recently has continued to be, 
"the equality of men." And although it has 
always submitted patiently to whatever of 
inequality there seemed to be as matter of 
actual necessity, its constant working has 
been a steady progress toward the practical 
equality of all men. The late presidential 
election was a struggle by one party to discard 
that central idea and to substitute for it the 
opposite idea that slavery is right in the ab- 
stract, the workings of which as a central idea 
may be the perpetuity of human slavery and 
its extension to all countries and colors. Less 
than a year ago the Richmond Enquirer, an 
avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of 
color, in order to favor his views, invented the 
phrase "State equality," and now the Presi- 
dent, in his message, adopts the Enquirer's 
catch-phrase, telling us the people "have 
asserted the constitutional equality of each 
and all of the States of the Union as States." 
The President flatters himself that the new 
central idea is completely inaugurated; and 
so indeed it is, so far as the mere fact of a 
presidential election can inaugurate it. To 
us it is left to know that the majority of the 
people have not yet declared for it, and to 
hope that they never will. 

Let us reinaugurate the good old "central 
idea" of the republic. We can do it. The 
47 



human heart is with us; God is with us. We 
shall again be able not to declare that "all 
States as States are equal," nor yet that "all 
citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew 
the broader, better declaration, including 
both these and much more, that "all men are 
created equal." — Speech at Republican Ban- 
quet in Chicago; December lo, 1856. 



I PROTEST against the counterfeit logic 
which concludes that, because I do not 
want a black woman for a slave I must neces- 
sarily want her for a wife. I need not have 
her for either. I can just leave her alone. In 
some respects she certainly is not my equal; 
but in her natural right to eat the bread she 
earns with her own hands without asking leave 
of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal 
of all others. 

I think the authors of that notable instru- 
ment [the Declaration of Independence] in- 
tended to include all men, but they did not 
intend to declare all men equal in all respects. 
They did not mean to say all were equal in 
color, size, intellect, moral developments, or 
social capacity. They defined with tolerable 
distinctness in what respects they did con- 
sider all men created equal — equal with 
"certain inalienable rights, among which are 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
This they said, and this they meant. They 
48 



did not mean to assert the obvious untruth 
that all were then actually enjoying that 
equality, nor yet that they were about to con- 
fer it immediately upon them. In fact, they 
had no power to confer such a boon. They 
meant simply to declare the right, so that en- 
forcement of it might follow as fast as circum- 
stances should permit. 

They meant to set up a standard maxim for 
free society, which should be familiar to all, 
and revered by all; constantly looked to, con- 
stantly labored for, and even though never 
perfectly attained, constantly approximated, 
and thereby constantly spreading and deepen- 
ing, its influence and augmenting the happi- 
ness and value of life to all people of all colors 
everywhere. The assertion that "all men are 
created equal" was of no practical use in 
effecting our separation from Great Britain; 
and it was placed in the Declaration not for 
that, but for future use. Its authors meant 
it to be — as, thank God, it is now proving 
itself — a stumbling-block to all those who 
in after times might seek to turn a free people 
back into the hateful paths of despotism. 
They knew the proneness of prosperity to 
breed tyrants, and they meant when such 
should reappear in this fair land and com- 
mence their vocation, they should find left for 
them at least one hard nut to crack. 

I had thought the Declaration promised 
something better than the condition of British 
4 49 



subjects; but no, it only meant [according to 
Judge Douglas] that we should be equal to 
them in their own oppressed and unequal 
condition. According to that, it gave no prom- 
ise that, having kicked off the king and lords 
of Great Britain, we should not at once be 
saddled with a king and lords of our own. 

I had thought the Declaration contem- 
plated the progressive improvement in the 
condition of all men everywhere; but no, it 
merely "was adopted for the purpose of justi- 
fying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized 
world in withdrawing their allegiance from 
the British crown, and dissolving their con- 
nection with the mother country." Why, 
that object having been effected some eighty 
years ago, the Declaration is of no practical 
use now — mere rubbish — old wadding left 
to rot on the battle-field after the victory is 
won. 

I understand you are preparing to celebrate 
the "Fourth," to-morrow week. What for? 
The doings of that day had no reference to 
the present; and quite half of you are not 
even descendants of those who were referred 
to at that day. But I suppose you will cele- 
brate, and will even go so far as to read the 
Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once 
in the old-fashioned way, you read it once 
more with Judge Douglas's version. It will 
then run thus: "We hold these truths to be 
self-evident, that all British subjects who were 
on this continent eighty-one years ago, were 

50 



created equal to all British subjects born and 
then residing in Great Britain." 

And now I appeal to all — to Democrats as 
well as others — are you really willing that 
the Declaration shall thus be frittered awa\ ? 
— thus left no more, at most, than an inter- 
esting memorial of the dead past ? — thus 
shorn of its vitality and practical value, and 
left without the germ or even the suggestion 
of the individual rights of man in it? 

How differently the respective courses of 
the Democratic and Republican parties inci- 
dentally bear on the question of forming a 
will — a public sentiment — for colonization, 
is easy to see. The Republicans inculcate, 
with whatever of ability they can, that the 
negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly 
wrong, and that the field of his oppression 
ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats 
deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insig- 
nificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far 
as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and 
cultivate and exxite hatred and disgust against 
him; compliment themselves as Union-savers 
for doing so; and call the indefinite outspread- 
ing of his bondage "a sacred right of self- 
government." 

The plainest print cannot be read through 
a gold eagle; and it will be ever hard to find 
many men who will send a slave to Liberia, 
and pay his passage, while they can send him 
to a new country — Kansas, for instance — 
SI 



and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars, and 
the rise. — Speech in Reply to Senator Douglas 
at Springfield, III.; June 26, 1857. 



WE are now far into the fifth year since a 
policy was initiated with the avowed 
object and confident promise of putting an 
end to slavery agitation. Under the operation 
of that policy, that agitation has not only not 
ceased, but has constantly augmented. In 
my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall 
have been reached and passed. "A house 
divided against itself cannot stand." I be- 
lieve this government cannot endure per- 
manently half slave and half free. I do not 
expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not 
expect the house to fall — but I do expect it 
will cease to be divided. It will become all 
one thing, or all the other. Either the op- 
ponents of slavery will arrest the further 
spread of it, and place it where the public 
mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 
course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates 
will push it forward till it shall become alike 
lawful in all the States, old as well as new, 
North as well as South, 

It will throw additional light ... to go 
back and run the mind over the string of his- 
torical facts already stated. Several things 
will now appear less dark and mysterious than 
they did when they were transpiring. The 

.S2 



people were to be left "perfectly free,'' "sub- 
ject only to the Constitution." What the Con- 
stitution had to do with it outsiders could not 
then see. Plainly enough now, it was an 
exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision 
to afterward come in, and declare the perfect 
freedom of the people to be just no freedom 
at all. Why was the amendment expressly 
declaring the right of the people voted down ? 
Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would 
have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott 
decision. Why was the court decision held 
up ? Why even a senator's individual opinion 
withheld till after the presidential election? 
Plainly enough now, the speaking out then 
would have damaged the "perfectly free" 
argument upon which the election was to be 
carried. Why the outgoing President's felici- 
tation on the indorsement? Why the delay 
of a reargument? Why the incoming Presi- 
dent's advance exhortation in favor of the 
decision ? These things look like the cautious 
patting and petting of a spirited horse pre- 
paratory to mounting him, when it is dreaded 
that he may give the rider a fall. And why 
the hasty after-indorsement of the decision 
by the President and others? 

We cannot absolutely know that all these 
exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. 
But when we see a lot of framed timbers, dif- 
ferent portions of which we know have been 
gotten out at different times and places and 
by different workmen, — Stephen, Franklin, 

53 



Roger, and James, for instance, — and we 
see these timbers joined together, and see they 
exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, 
all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and 
all the lengths and proportions of the different 
pieces exactly adapted to their respective 
places, and not a piece too many or too few, 
not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single 
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame 
exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such 
piece in — in such a case we find it impossible 
not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and 
Roger and James all understood one another 
from the beginning, and all worked upon a 
common plan or draft drawn up before the 
first blow was struck. — Speech Accepting the 
Nomination for United States Senator, Spring- 
field, III.; June i6, 1858. 



WHAT was squatter sovereignty ? I sup- 
pose if it had any significance at all, 
it was the right of the people to govern them- 
selves, to be sovereign in their own affairs 
while they were squatted down in a country 
not their own, while they had squatted on a 
Territory that did not belong to them, in the 
sense that a State belongs to the people who 
inhabit it — when it belonged to the nation 
— such right to govern themselves was called 
" squatter sovereignty." 

Now I wish you to mark what has become 
of that squatter sovereignty. What has be- 

54 



come of it ? Can you get anybody to tell you 
now that the people of a Territory have any 
authority to govern themselves, in regard to 
this mooted question of slavery, before they 
form a State constitution? No such thing at 
all, although there is a general running fire, 
and although there has been a hurrah made 
in every speech on that side, assuming that 
policy had given the people of a Territory the 
right to govern themselves upon this question; 
yet the point is dodged. To-day it has been 
decided — no more than a year ago it was 
decided by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and is insisted upon to-day — that the 
people of a Territory have no right to exclude 
slavery from a Territory ; that if any one man 
chooses to take slaves into a Territory, all the 
rest of the people have no right to keep them 
out. 

We were often ... in the course of Judge 
Douglas's speech last night reminded that this 
government was made for white men. . . . 
Well, that is putting it into a shape in which 
no one wants to deny it; but the judge then 
goes into his passion for drawing inferences 
that are not warranted. I protest now and 
forever, against that counterfeit logic which 
presumes that because I do not want a negro 
woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her 
for a wife. My understanding is that I need 
not have her for either; but, as God made us 
separate, we can leave one another alone, and 
55 



do one another much good thereby. There 
are white men enough to marry all the white 
women, and enough black men to marry all 
the black women, and in God's name let 
them be so married. The judge regales us 
with the terrible enormities that take place 
by the mixture of races; that the inferior race 
bears the superior down. Why, judge, if we 
do not let them get together in the Territories, 
they won't mix there. [A voice: "Three 
cheers for Lincoln/" The cheers were given 
with a hearty good will.] I should say at least 
that that is a self-evident truth. 

We have . . . among us . . . men who 
have come from Europe . . . and settled 
here, finding themselves ourequal in all things. 
If they look back through this history to trace 
their connection with those days by blood, 
they find they have none; they cannot carry 
themselves back into that glorious epoch and 
make themselves feel that they are part of us; 
but when they look through that old Declara- 
tion of Independence, they find that those old 
men say that "We hold these truths to be 
self-evident, that all men are created equal," 
and then they feel that that moral sentiment 
taught in that day evidences their relation to 
those men, that it is the father of all moral 
principle in them, and that they have a right 
to claim it as though they were blood of the 
blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who 
wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That 
56 



is the electric cord in that Declaration that 
links the hearts of patriotic- and liberty-loving 
men together, that will link those patriotic 
hearts as long as the love oi freedom exists in 
the minds of men throughout the world. . . . 
According to his [Judge Douglas's] con- 
struction [of the Dec laration], you Germans 
are not connected with it. Now 1 ask you, in 
all soberness, if all these things, if indulged 
in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if 
taught to our children, and repeated to them, 
do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty 
in the country, and to transform this govern- 
ment into a government of some other form ? 
Those arguments tliat are made, that the 
inferior race are to be treated with as much 
allowance as they are cajmble of enjoying; 
that as much is to be done for them as their 
condition will allow — what are these argu- 
ments? They are the arguments that kings 
have made for enslaving the people in all ages 
of the world. You will find that all the argu- 
ments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; 
they always bestrode the necks of the people 
— not that they wanted to do it, but because 
the people were better off for being ridden. 
That is their argument, and this argument 
of the judge is the same old serpent that says, 
You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy 
the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you 
will — whether it come from the mouth of a 
king, an excuse for enslaving the people of 
his country, or from the mouth of men of one 

57 



race as a reason for enslaving the men of 
another race, it is all the same old serpent, 
and I hold if that course of argumentation 
that is made for the purpose of convincing the 
public mind that we should not care about 
this should be granted, it does not stop vi^ith 
the negro. I should like to know — taking 
this old Declaration of Independence, which 
declares that all men are equal upon principle, 
and making exceptions to it — where will it 
stop? If one man says it does not mean a 
negro, why not another say it does not mean 
some other man? If that Declaration is not 
the truth, let us get the statute-book in which 
we find it, and tear it out ! Who is so bold as 
to do it ? If it is not true, let us tear it out. 
[Cries of No, no. "] Let us stick to it, then; 
let us stand firmly iDy it, then. 

It is said in one of the admonitions of our 
Lord, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." The Saviour, 
I suppose, did not expect that any human 
creature could be perfect as the Father in 
heaven; but ... he set that up as a stand- 
ard, and he who did most toward reaching 
that standard attained the highest degree of 
moral perfection. So I say in relation to the 
principle that all men are created equal, let 
it be as nearly reached as we can. If we can- 
not give freedom to every creature, let us do 
nothing that will impose slavery upon any 
other creature. Let us then turn this govern- 
58 



ment back into the channel in which the 
framers of the Constitution originally placed 
it. Let us stand firmly by each other. If we 
do not do so, we are tending in the contrary 
direction that our friend Judge Douglas pro- 
poses — not intentionally — working in the 
traces that tend to make this one universal 
slave nation. He is one that runs in that 
direction, and as such I resist him. — Speech 
at Chicago; July lo, 1858. 



THERE is still another disadvantage under 
which we labor. ... It arises out of 
the relative positions of the two persons who 
stand before the State as candidates for the 
Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide 
renown. All the anxious politicians of his 
party, or who have been of his party for years 
past, have been looking upon him as certainly, 
at no distant day, to be the President of the 
United States. They have seen in his round, 
jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, 
marshalships, and cabinet appointments, 
charg^ships and foreign missions, bursting 
and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, 
ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. 
And as they have been gazing upon this at- 
tractive picture so long, they cannot, in the 
little distraction that has taken place in the 
party, bring themselves to give up the charm- 
ing hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush 
about him, sustain him, and give him marches, 

59 



triumphal entries, and receptions beyond 
what even in the days of his highest prosperity 
they could have brought about in his favor. 
On the contrary, nobody has ever expected 
me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank 
face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages 
were sprouting out. — Speech at Springfield, 
III.; July 17, 1858. 



NOW, my countrymen, if you have been 
taught doctrines conflicting with the 
great landmarks of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence; if you have listened to suggestions 
which would take away from its grandeur and 
mutilate the fair symmetr}' of its proportions; 
if you have been inclined to believe that all 
men are not created equal in those inalien- 
able rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, 
let me entreat you to come back. Return to 
the fountain whose waters spring close by 
the blood of the revolution. Think nothing 
of me — take no thought for the political fate 
of any man whomsoever — but come back 
to the truths that are in the Declaration of 
Independence. You may do anything with 
me you choose, if you will but heed these 
sacred principles. You may not only defeat 
me for the Senate, but you may take me and 
put me to death. While pretending no indif- 
ference to earthly honors, I do claim to be 
actuated in this contest by something higher 
than an anxiety for office. I charge you to 
60 



drop every paltry and insignificant thought 
for any man's success. It is nothing; I am 
nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do 
not destroy that immortal emblem of Human- 
ity — the Declaration of American Independ- 
ence. — Speech at Lewiston, III.; August 17, 
1858. 



YOU can fool all the people some of the 
time, and some of the people all of the 
time, but you cannot fool all the people all 
the i\vc\Q. — Speech at Clinton, III.; Sep- 
tember 8, 1858. 



JUDGE Douglas's discovery: . . . the 
right to breed and flog negroes in Ne- 
braska was popular sovereignty. — Speech at 
Paris, III.; September 8, 1858. 



AND when, by all these means, you have 
succeeded in dehumanizing the negro; 
when you have put him down and made it 
impossible for him to be but as the beasts of 
the field; when you have extinguished his 
soul in this world and placed him where the 
ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness 
of the damned, are you quite sure that the 
demon you have roused will not turn and 
rend you ? What constitutes the bulwark of 
our own liberty and independence ? It is not 
61 



our frowning battlements, our bristling sea- 
coasts, our army and our navy. These are 
not our reliance against tyranny. All of those 
may be turned against us without making us 
weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the 
love of liberty which God has planted in us. 
Our defence is in the spirit which prized 
liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands 
everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have 
planted the seeds of despotism at your own 
doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains 
of bondage and you prepare your own limbs 
to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the 
rights of others, you have lost the genius of 
your own independence and become the fit 
subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises 
among you. And let me tell you, that all 
these things are prepared for you by the teach- 
ings of history, if the elections shall promise 
that the next Dred Scott decision and all 
future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in 
by the people. — Speech at Edwardsville, III. ; 
September 13, 1858. 



T HOLD that the proposition [advanced by 
-*■ Judge Douglas] that slavery cannot enter 
a new country without police regulations is 
historically false. It is not true at all. I hold 
that the history of this country shows that the 
institution of slavery was originally planted 
upon this continent without these "police 
regulations" which the judge now thinks 
62 



necessary for the actual establishment of it. 
Not only so, but is there not another fact — 
how came this Dred Scott decision to be made ? 
It was made upon the case of a negro being 
taken and actually held in slavery in Min- 
nesota Territory, claiming his freedom be- 
cause the act of Congress prohibited his being 
so held there. Will the judge pretend that 
Dred Scott was not held there without police 
regulations? There is at least one matter of 
record as to his having been held in slavery 
in the Territory, not only without police reg- 
ulations, but in the teeth of congressional 
legislation supposed to be valid at the time. 
This shows that there is vigor enough in 
slavery to plant itself in a new country even 
against unfriendly legislation. It takes not 
only law but the enforcement of law to keep 
it out. That is the history of this country 
upon the subject. 

I wish to ask one other question. It being 
understood that the Constitution of the United 
States guarantees property in slaves in the 
Territories, if there is any infringement of the 
right of that property, would not the United 
States courts, organized for the government 
of the Territory, apply such remedy as might 
be necessary in that case ? It is a maxim held 
by the courts, that there is no wrong without 
its remedy; and the courts have a remedy 
for whatever is acknowledged and treated as 
a wrong. 

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you 

63 



were elected members of the legislature, what 
would be the first thing you would have to do 
before entering upon your duties? Swear to 
support the Constitution of the United States. 
Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, 
that the Constitution of the United States 
guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold 
slaves in that Territory, — that they are his 
property, — how can you clear your oaths 
unless you give him such legislation as is nec- 
essary to enable him to enjoy that property ? 
. . . And what I say here will hold with still 
more force against the judge's doctrine of 
"unfriendly legislation." How could you, 
having sworn to support the Constitution, and 
believing that it guaranteed the right to hold 
slaves in the Territories, assist in legislation 
intended to defeat that right? That would 
be violating your own view of the Constitu- 
tion. Not only so, but if you were to do so, 
how long would it take the courts to hold your 
votes unconstitutional and void? Not a 
moment. 

Lastly I would ask — Is not Congress itself 
under obligation to give legislative support 
to any right that is established under the 
United States Constitution? ... A member 
of Congress swears to support the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, and if he sees a right 
established by that Constitution which needs 
specific legislative protection, can he clear his 
oath without giving that protection? Let me 
ask you why many of us who are opposed to 
64 



slavery upon principle give our acquiescence 
to a fugitive-slave law ? Why do we hold our- 
selves under obligations to pass such a law, 
and abide by it when it is passed? Because 
the Constitution makes provision that the 
owners of slaves shall have the right to re- 
claim them. It gives the right to reclaim 
slaves, and that right is, as Judge Douglas 
says, a barren right, unless there is legislation 
that will enforce it. — Debate with Douglas at 
Jonesboro, III.; September 15, 1858. 



I HAVE never had the least apprehension 
that I or my friends would marry negroes 
if there was no law to keep them from it ; but 
as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be 
in great apprehension that they might, if there 
were no law to keep them from it, I give him 
the most solemn pledge that I will to the very 
last stand by the law of this State, which for- 
bids the marrying of white people with ne- 
groes. I will add one further word, which is 
this: that I do not understand that there is 
any place where an alteration of the social and 
political relations of the negro and the white 
man can be made except in the State legisla- 
ture — not in the Congress of the United 
States; and as I do not really apprehend the 
approach of any such thing myself, and as 
Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror 
that some such danger is rapidly approach- 
ing, I propose, as the best means to prevent 
5 65 



it, that the judge be kept at home and placed 
in the State legislature to fight the measure. 
— Debate with Douglas at Charleston, III. ; 
September i8, 1858. 



THE judge has alluded to the Declaration 
of Independence, and insisted that ne- 
groes are not included in that Declaration; 
and that it is a slander upon the framers of 
that instrument to suppose that negroes were 
meant therein; and he asks you: Is it pos- 
sible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned 
the immortal paper, could have supposed 
himself applying the language of that instru- 
ment to the negro race, and yet held a portion 
of that race in slavery ? Would he not at once 
have freed them ? I only have to remark upon 
this part of the judge's speech that I believe 
the entire records of the world, from the date 
of the Declaration of Independence up to 
within three years ago, may be searched in 
vain for one single affirmation, from one 
single man, that the negro was not included 
in the Declaration of Independence; I think 
I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he 
ever said so, that Washington ever said so, 
that any President ever said so, that any 
member of Congress ever said so, or that any 
living man upon the whole earth ever said 
so, until the necessities of the present policy 
of the Democratic party in regard to slavery 
had to invent that affirmation. And I will 
66 



remind Judge Douglas and this audience that 
while Mr. Jefiferson was the owner of slaves, 
as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this 
very subject, he used the strong language that 
"he trembled for his country when he remem- 
bered that God was just"; and I will offer 
the highest premium in my power to Judge 
Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, 
ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that 
of Jefferson. 

I have never manifested any impatience 
with the necessities that spring from the 
actual presence of black people amongst us, 
and the actual existence of slavery amongst 
us where it does already exist; but I have 
insisted that, in legislating for new countries 
where it does not exist, there is no just rule 
other than that of moral and abstract right. 
With reference to those new countries, those 
maxims as to the right of a people to "life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were 
the just rules to be constantly referred to. 
There is no misunderstanding this, except by 
men interested to misunderstand it. . . . 
The real difference between Douglas and his 
friends and the Republicans is that the judge 
is not in favor of making any difference be- 
tween slavery and liberty — that he is in 
favor of eradicating, of pressing out of view, 
the questions of preference in this country for 
free or slave institutions; and consequently 
every sentiment he utters discards the idea 
67 



that there is any wrong in slavery. Every- 
thing that emanates from him or his coad- 
jutors in their course of policy carefully ex- 
cludes the thought that there is anything 
wrong in slavery. If you will take the judge's 
speeches, and select the short and pointed 
sentences expressed by him, — as his declara- 
tion that he "don't care whether slavery is 
voted up or down," — you will see at once 
that this is perfectly logical, if you do not 
admit that slavery is wrong. If you do admit 
that it is wrong. Judge Douglas cannot logi- 
cally say he don't care whether a wrong is 
voted up or voted down. Judge Douglas 
declares that if any community wants slavery 
they have a right to have it. He can say that 
logically, if he says that there is no wrong in 
slavery ; but if you admit that there is a wrong 
in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has 
a right to do wrong. He insists that upon the 
score of equality the owners of slaves and 
owners of property — of horses and every 
other sort of property — should be alike, and 
hold them alike in a new Territory. That is 
perfectly logical, if the two species of prop- 
erty are alike, and are equally founded in 
right. But if you admit that one of them is 
wrong, you cannot institute any equality be- 
tween right and wrong. And from this differ- 
ence of sentiment — the belief on the part of 
one that the institution is wrong, and a policy 
springing from that belief which looks to the 
arrest of the enlargement of that wrong; and 
68 



this other sentiment, that it is no wrong, and 
a policy sprung from that sentiment which 
will tolerate no idea of preventing that wrong 
from growing larger, and looks to there never 
being an end of it through all the existence of 
things — arises the real difference between 
Judge Douglas and his friends on the one 
hand, and the Republicans on the other. 
Now, I confess myself as belonging to that 
class in the country who contemplate slavery 
as a moral, social, and political evil, having 
due regard for its actual existence amongst 
us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in 
any satisfactory way, and to all the constitu- 
tional obligations which have been thrown 
about it; but who, nevertheless, desire a 
policy that looks to the prevention of it as a 
wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when 
as a wrong it may come to an end. 

Judge Douglas — and whoever, like him, 
teaches that the negro has no share, humble 
though it may be, in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence — is going back to the era of our 
liberty and independence, and, so far as in 
him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders 
its annual joyous return; ... he is blowing 
out the moral lights around us, when he con- 
tends that whoever wants slaves has a right 
to hold them; ... he is penetrating, so far as 
lies in his power, the human soul, and eradi- 
cating the light of reason and the love of 
liberty, when he is in every possible way pre- 
69 



paring the public mind, by his vast influence, 
for making the institution of slavery perpetual 
and national. — Debate with Douglas at 
Galeshurg, III.; October 7, 1858. 



JUDGE DOUGLAS asks you, "Why 
cannot the institution of slavery, or 
rather, why cannot the nation, part slave 
and part free, continue as our fathers made 
it forever?" In the first place, I insist that 
our fathers did not make this nation half 
slave and half free, or part slave and part 
free. I insist that they found the institution 
of slavery existing here. They did not make 
it so, but they left it so because they knew 
of no way to get rid of it at that time. 
. . . More than that: when the fathers 
of the government cut off" the source of 
slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, 
and adopted a system of restricting it from 
the new Territories where it had not existed, 
I maintain that they placed it where they 
understood, and all sensible men understood, 
it was in the course of ultimate extinction; 
and when Judge Douglas asks me why it can- 
not continue as our fathers made it, I ask him 
why he and his friends could not let it re- 
main as our fathers made it ? 

It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to 

the institution of slavery, that it shall be 

placed upon the basis that our fathers placed 

it upon, Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, 

70 



once said, and truly said, that when this gov- 
ernment was established, no one expected the 
institution of slavery to last until this day; 
and that the men who formed this government 
were wiser and better than the men of these 
days; but the men of these days had experi- 
ence which the fathers had not, and that ex- 
perience had taught them the invention of 
the cotton-gin, and this had made the per- 
petuation of the institution of slavery a neces- 
sity in this country. Judge Douglas could 
not let it stand upon the basis where our 
fathers placed it, but removed it, and put it 
upon the cotton-gin basis. It is a question, 
therefore, for him and his friends to answer 
— why they could not let it remain where 
the fathers of the government originally 
placed it. 

Does the judge mean to say that the ter- 
ritorial legislature in legislating may, by with- 
holding necessary laws or by passing un- 
friendly laws, nullify . . . constitutional right ? 
Does he mean to say that ? Does he mean to 
ignore the proposition, so long and well es- 
tablished in law, that what you cannot do 
directly, you cannot do indirectly? Does he 
mean that? The truth about the matter is 
this: Judge Douglas has sung paeans to his 
"popular sovereignty" doctrine until his 
Supreme Court, co-operating with him, has 
squatted his squatter sovereignty out. But 
he will keep up this species of humbuggery 
71 



about squatter sovereignty. He has at last 
invented this sort of do-nothing sovereignty 
— that the people may exclude slavery by a 
sort of "sovereignty" that is exercised by 
doing nothing at all. Is not that running his 
popular sovereignty down awfully? Has it 
not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup 
that was made by boiling the shadow of a 
pigeon that had starved to death? But at 
last, when it is brought to the test of close 
reasoning, there is not even that thin decoc- 
tion of it left. It is a presumption impossible 
in the domain of thought. It is precisely no 
other than the putting of that most unphilo- 
sophical proposition, that two bodies can oc- 
cupy the same space at the same time. The 
Dred Scott decision covers the whole ground, 
and while it occupies it, there is no room even 
for the shadow of a starved pigeon to occupy 
the same ground. — Debate with Douglas at 
Quincy, III.; October 13, 1858. 



BUT is it true that all the diflficulty and 
agitation we have in regard to this insti- 
tution of slavery springs from office-seeking 
— from the mere ambition of politicians? Is 
that the truth? How many times have we 
had danger from this question? Go back to 
the day of the Missouri Compromise. Go 
back to the nullification question, at the bot- 
tom of which lay this same slavery question. 
Go back to the time of the annexation of 
72 



Texas. Go back to the troubles that led to 
the compromise of 1850. You will find that 
every time, with the single exception of the 
nullification question, they sprang from an 
endeavor to spread this institution. There 
never was a party in the history of this country, 
and there probably never will be, of sufficient 
strength to disturb the general peace of the 
country. Parties themselves may be divided 
and quarrel on minor questions, yet it extends 
not beyond the parties themselves. But does 
not this question make a disturbance outside 
of political circles ? Does it not enter into the 
churches and rend them asunder? What 
divided the great Methodist Church into two 
parts, North and South? What has raised 
this constant disturbance in every Presby- 
terian general assembly that meets? What 
disturbed the Unitarian Church in this very 
city two years ago? What has jarred and 
shaken the great American Tract Society 
recently — not yet splitting it, but sure to 
divide it in the end? Is it not this same 
mighty, deep-seated power that somehow 
operates on the minds of men, exciting and 
stirring them up in every avenue of society — • 
in politics, in religion, in literature, in morals, 
in all the manifold relations of life? Is this 
the work of politicians? Is that irresistible 
power, which for fifty years has shaken the 
government and agitated the people, to be 
stilled and subdued by pretending that it is 
an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought 

73 



not to talk about it? If you will get every- 
body else to stop talking about it, I assure you 
I will quit before they have half done so. But 
where is the philosophy or statesmanship 
which assumes that you can quiet that dis- 
turbing element in our society which has dis- 
turbed us for more than half a century, which 
has been the only serious danger that has 
threatened our institutions — I say, where 
is the philosophy or the statesmanship based 
on the assumption that we are to quit talking 
about it, and that the public mind is all at 
once to cease being agitated by it ? Yet this 
is the policy here in the North that Douglas 
is advocating — that we are to care nothing 
about it ! I ask you if it is not a false philos- 
ophy ? Is it not a false statesmanship that 
undertakes to build up a system of policy 
upon the basis of caring nothing about the 
very thing that everybody does care the most 
about — a thing which all experience has 
shown we care a very great deal about ? 

That is the real issue. That is the issue 
that will continue in this country when these 
poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself 
shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle be- 
tween these two principles — right and wrong 
— throughout the world. They are the two 
principles that have stood face to face from 
the beginning of time; and will ever continue 
to struggle. The one is the common right of 
humanity, and the other the divine right of 
74 



kings. It is the same principle in whatever 
shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit 
that says, " You toil and work and earn bread, 
and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it 
comes, whether from the mouth of a king who 
seeks to bestride the people of his own nation 
and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one 
race of men as an apology for enslaving an- 
other race, it is the same tyrannical principle. 

Why, this is a monstrous sort of talk about 
the Constitution of the United States ! There 
has never been as outlandish or lawless a 
doctrine from the mouth of any respectable 
man on earth. I do not believe it is a consti- 
tutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of 
the United States. I believe the decision was 
improperly made, and I go for reversing it. 
Judge Douglas is furious against those who 
go for reversing a decision. But he is for 
legislating it out of all force while the law 
itself stands. I repeat that there has never 
been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the 
mouth of a respectable man. . . . 

I defy any man to make an argument that 
will justify unfriendly legislation to deprive a 
slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in 
a Territory, that will not equally, in all its 
length, breadth, and thickness, furnish an 
argument for nullifying the fugitive-slave law. 
Why, there is not such an Abolitionist in the 
nation as Douglas, after all. — Debate with 
Douglas at Alton, III.; October 15, 1858. 
75 



THE emotions of defeat at the close of a 
struggle in which I felt more than a 
merely selfish interest, and to which defeat 
the use of your name contributed largely, are 
fresh upon me ; but even in this mood I can- 
not for a moment suspect you of anything 
dishonorable. — Letter to J. J. Crittenden ; 
November 4, 1858. 

I AM glad I made the late race. It gave me 
a hearing on the great and durable ques- 
tion of the age, which I could have had in no 
other way; and though I now sink out of 
view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have 
made some marks which will tell for the cause 
of civil liberty long after I am gone. — Letter 
to Dr. A. G. Henry; November 19, 1858. 

WHILE I desired the result of the late 
canvass to have been different, I still 
regard it as an exceeding small matter. I 
think we have fairly entered upon a durable 
struggle as to whether this nation is to ulti- 
mately become all slave or all free, and though 
I fall early in the contest, it is nothing if I 
shall have contributed, in the least degree, to 
the final rightful result. — Letter to H. D. 
Sharpe; December 8, 1858. 

GENTLEMEN: Your kind note inviting 
me to attend a festival in Boston, on the 
28th instant, in honor of the birthday of 
76 



Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My 
engagements are such that I cannot attend. 

Bearing in mind that about seventy years 
ago two great political parties were first 
formed in this country, that Thomas Jeffer- 
son was the head of one of them and Boston 
the headquarters of the other, it is both curi- 
ous and interesting that those supposed to 
descend politically from the party opposed 
to Jefferson should now be celebrating his 
birthday in their own original seat of empire, 
while those claiming political descent from 
him have nearly ceased to breathe his name 
everywhere. 

Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party 
was formed upon its supposed superior devo- 
tion to the personal rights of men, holding the 
rights of property to be secondary only, and 
greatly inferior, and assuming that the so- 
called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, 
and their opponents the anti- Jefferson party, 
it will be equally interesting to note how com- 
pletely the two have changed hands as to the 
principle upon which they were originally sup- 
posed to be divided. The Democracy of to- 
day hold the liberty of one man to be abso- 
lutely nothing, when in conflict with another 
man's right of property; Republicans, on the 
contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, 
but in case of conflict the man before the dollar. 
I remember being once much amused at 
seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged 
in a fight with their great-coats on, which 
77 



fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, 
ended in each having fought himself out of 
his own coat and into that of the other. If 
the two leading parties of this day are really 
identical with the two in the days of Jefferson 
and Adams, they have performed the same 
feat as the two drunken men. 

But, soberly, it is now no child's play to 
save the principles of Jefferson from total 
overthrow in this nation. One would state 
with great confidence that he could convince 
any sane child that the simpler propositions 
of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would 
fail, utterly, with one who should deny the 
definitions and axioms. The principles of 
Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of 
free society. And yet they are denied and 
evaded, with no small show of success. One 
dashingly calls them "glittering generalities." 
Another bluntly calls them "self-evident lies." 
And others insidiously argue that they apply 
to "superior races." These expressions, dif- 
fering in form, are identical in object and 
effect — the supplanting the principles of free 
government, and restoring those of classifica- 
tion, caste, and legitimacy. They would de- 
light a convocation of crowned heads plotting 
against the people. They are the vanguard, 
the miners and sappers of returning despot- 
ism. We must repulse them, or they will sub- 
jugate us. This is a world of compensation; 
and he who would be no slave must consent 
to have no slave. Those who deny freedom 
78 



to others deserve it not for themselves, and, 
under a just God, cannot long retain it. All 
honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in the 
concrete pressure of a struggle for national 
independence by a single people, had the cool- 
ness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into 
a merely revolutionary document an abstract 
truth, applicable to all men and all times, and 
so to embalm it there that to-day and in all 
coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stum- 
bling-block to the very harbingers of reap- 
pearing tyranny and oppression. — Letter to 
Jefferson Dinner Committee of Boston; April 
6, 1859. 

YOU will probably adopt resolutions in the 
nature of a platform. I think the only 
temptation will be to lower the Republican 
standard in order to gather recruits. In my 
judgment such a step would be a serious mis- 
take, and open a gap through which more 
would pass out than pass in. And this would 
be the same whether the letting down should 
be in deference to Douglasism or to the South- 
ern opposition element; either would surren- 
der the object of the Republican organization 
— the preventing of the spread and nationali- 
zation of slavery. This object surrendered, 
the organization would go to pieces. I do 
not mean by this that no Southern man must 
be placed upon our national ticket in i860. 
There are many men in the slave States for 
any one of whom I could cheerfully vote to 

79 



be either President or Vice-President, pro- 
vided he would enable me to do so with safety 
to the Republican cause, without lowering 
the Republican standard. This is the indis- 
pensable condition of a union with us; it is 
idle to talk of any other. Any other would be 
as fruitless to the South as distasteful to the 
North, the whole ending in common defeat. 
Let a union be attempted on the basis of 
ignoring the slavery question, and magnifying 
other questions which the people are just now 
not caring about, and it will result in gaining 
no single electoral vote in the South, and los- 
ing every one in the North. — Letter to M. W. 
Delahay; May 14, 1859. 

UNDERSTANDING the spirit of our in- 
stitutions to aim at the elevation of men, 
I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade 
them. I have some little notoriety for com- 
miserating the oppressed negro; and I should 
be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any 
project for curtailing the existing rights of 
white men, even though born in different 
lands, and speaking different languages from 
myself. — Letter to Dr. Theodore Canisius ; 
May 17, 1859. 

TWO things done by the Ohio Republi- 
can convention — the repudiation of 
Judge Swan, and the "plank" for a repeal 
of the fugitive-slave law — I very much re- 
gretted. These two things are of a piece; 
80 



and they are viewed by many good men, 
sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle 
against, and in disregard of, the Constitution 
itself. And it is the very thing that will 
greatly endanger our cause, if it be not kept 
out of our national convention. There is 
another thing our friends are doing which 
gives me some uneasiness. It is their leaning 
toward "popular sovereignty." There are 
three substantial objections to this. First, no 
party can command respect which ^stains 
this year what it opposed last. Secondly, 
Douglas (who is the most dangerous enemy 
of liberty, because the most insidious one) 
would have little support in the North, and 
by consequence, no capital to trade on in the 
South, if it were not for his friends thus mag- 
nifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and 
chiefly, Douglas's popular sovereignty, ac- 
cepted by the public mind as a just principle, 
nationalizes slavery, and revives the African 
slave-trade inevitably. Taking slaves into 
new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, 
are identical things, identical rights or identi- 
cal wrongs, and the argument which estab- 
lishes one will establish the other. Try a 
thousand years for a sound reason why Con- 
gress shall not hinder the people of Kansas 
from having slaves, and when you have found 
it, it will be an equally good one why Con- 
gress should not hinder the people of Georgia 
from importing slaves from Africa. — Letter 
to Samuel Galloway; July 28, 1859. 
6 81 



THIS is an idea, I suppose, which has 
arisen in Judge Douglas's mind from 
his peculiar structure. I suppose the institu- 
tion of slavery really looks small to him. He 
is so put up by nature that a lash upon his 
back would hurt him, but a lash upon any- 
body else's back does not hurt him. That is 
the build of the man, and consequently he 
looks upon the matter of slavery in this un- 
important light. 

Judge Douglas ought to remember, when 
he is endeavoring to force this policy upon the 
American people, that while he is put up in 
that way, a good many are not. He ought to 
remember that there was once in this country 
a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, sup- 
posed to be a Democrat — a man whose 
principles and policy are not very prevalent 
amongst Democrats to-day, it is true; but 
that man did not take exactly this view of the 
insignificance of the element of slavery which 
our friend Judge Douglas does. In contem- 
plation of this thing, we all know he was led 
to exclaim, "I tremble for my country when 
I remember that God is just!" We know 
how he looked upon it when he thus expressed 
himself. There was danger to this country, 
danger of the avenging justice of God, in that 
little unimportant popular-sovereignty ques- 
tion of Judge Douglas. He supposed there was 
a question of God's eternal justice wrapped 
up in the enslaving of any race of men, or 
any man, and that those who did so braved 



the arm of Jehovah — that when a nation thus 
dared the Almighty, every friend of that na- 
tion had cause to dread his wrath. Choose 
ye between Jefferson and Douglas as to what 
is the true view of this element among us. 

Then I say if this principle is established, 
that there is no wrong in^slavery, and whoever 
wants it has a right to have it; that it is a 
matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question 
as to how they shall deal with brutes; that 
between us and the negro here there is no 
sort of question, but that at the South the 
question is between the negro and the croco- 
dile; that it is a mere matter of policy; that 
there is a perfect right, according to interest, 
to do just as you please — when this is done, 
where this doctrine prevails, the miners and 
sappers will have formed public opinion for 
the slave-trade. They will be ready for Jeff 
Davis and Stephens, and other leaders of 
that company, to sound the bugle for the re- 
vival of the slave-trade, for the second Dred 
Scott decision, for the flood of slavery to be 
poured over the free States, while we shall be 
here tied down and helpless, and run over like 
sheep. — Speech at Columbus y Ohio; Sep- 
tember i6, 1859. 



AT . , . Memphis, he [Judge Douglas] 
declared that in all contests between the 
negro and the white man, he was for the white 

83 



man, but that in all questions between the 
negro and the crocodile he was for the 
negro. . . . 

The first inference seems to be that if you 
do not enslave the negro you are wronging the 
white man in some way or other; and that 
whoever is opposed to the negro being en- 
slaved is, in some way or other, against the 
white man. Is not that a falsehood ? If there 
was a necessary conflict between the white 
man and the negro, I should be for the white 
man as much as Judge Douglas; but I say 
there is no such necessary conflict. I say that 
there is room enough for us all to be free, and 
that it not only does not wrong the white man 
that the negro should be free, but it positively 
wrongs the mass of the white men that the 
negro should be enslaved; that the mass of 
white men are really injured by the effects of 
slave-labor in the vicinity of the fields of their 
own labor. . . . 

The other branch of it is, that in a struggle 
between the negro and the crocodile, he is for 
the negro. Well, I don't know that there is 
any struggle between the negro and the croco- 
dile, either. I suppose that if a crocodile (or, 
as we old Ohio River boatmen used to call 
them, alligators) should come across a white 
man, he would kill him if he could, and so he 
would a negro. But what, at last, is this prop- 
osition ? I believe that it is a sort of propo- 
sition in proportion, which may be stated 
thus: "As the negro is to the white man, so 
84 



is the crocodile to the negro; and as the negro 
may rightfully treat the crocodile as a beast or 
reptile, so the white man may rightfully treat 
the negro as a beast or reptile." That is 
really the point of all that argument of his. 

Now, my brother Kentuckians, who believe 
in this, you ought to thank Judge Douglas for 
having put that in a much more taking way 
than any of yourselves have done. 

I think that there is a real popular sover- 
eignty in the world. I think a definition of 
popular sovereignty, in the abstract, would 
be about this — that each man shall do pre- 
cisely as he pleases with himself, and with all 
those things which exclusively concern him. 
Applied in government, this principle would 
be, that a general government shall do all 
those things which pertain to it, and all the 
local governments shall do precisely as they 
please in respect to those matters which ex- 
clusively concern them. 

Labor is the great source from which nearly 
all, if not all, human comforts and necessities 
are drawn. There is a difference in opinion 
about the elements of labor in society. Some 
men assume that there is a necessary connec- 
tion between capital and labor, and that con- 
nection draws within it the whole of the labor 
of the community. They assume that nobody 
works unless capital excites him to work. 
They begin next to consider what is the best 

85 



way. They say there are but two ways — one 
is to hire men and to allure them to labor by 
their consent ; the other is to buy the men and 
drive them to it, and that is slavery. Having 
assumed that, they proceed to discuss the 
question of whether the laborers themselves 
are better off in the condition of slaves or of 
hired laborers, and they usually decide that 
they are better off in the condition of slaves. 

In the first place, I say that the whole thing 
is a mistake. That there is a certain relation 
between capital and labor, I admit. That it 
does exist, and rightfully exists, I think is true. 
That men who are industrious and sober and 
honest in the pursuit of their own interests 
should after a while accumulate capital, and 
after that should be allowed to enjoy it in 
peace, and also if they should choose, when 
they have accumulated it, to use it to save 
themselves from actual labor, and hire other 
people to labor for them, is right. In doing 
so, they do not wrong the man they employ, 
for they find men, who have not their own 
land to work upon, or shops to work in, and 
who are benefited by working for others — 
hired laborers, receiving their capital for it. 
Thus a few men that own capital hire a few 
others, and these establish the relation of 
capital and labor rightfully — a relation of 
which I make no complaint. But I insist that 
that relation, after all, does not embrace more 
than one eighth of the labor of the country. 



86 



We must have a national policy in regard 
to the institution of slavery that acknowledges 
and deals with that institution as being wrong. 
Whoever desires the prevention of the spread 
of slavery and the nationalization of that 
institution, yields all when he yields to any 
policy that either recognizes slavery as being 
right, or as being an indifferent thing. Noth- 
ing will make you successful but setting up a 
policy which shall treat the thing as being 
wrong. When I say this, I do not mean to 
say that this General Government is charged 
with the duty of redressing or preventing all 
the wrongs in the world; but I do think that 
it is charged with preventing and redressing 
all wrongs which are wrongs to itself. This 
government is expressly charged with the 
duty of providing for the general welfare. We 
believe that the spreading out and perpetuity 
of the institution of slavery impairs the gen- 
eral welfare. We believe - — nay, we know — 
that that is the only thing that has ever threat- 
ened the perpetuity of the Union itself. The 
only thing which has ever menaced the de- 
struction of the government under which we 
live, is this very thing. To repress this 
thing, we think, is providing for the general 
welfare. . . . 

I say that we must not interfere with the 
institution of slavery in the States where it 
exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and 
the general welfare does not require us to 
do so. We must not withhold an efficient 

87 



fugitive-slave law, because the Constitution 
requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold 
such a law. But we must prevent the out- 
spreading of the institution, because neither 
the Constitution nor general welfare requires 
us to extend it. We must prevent the revival 
of the African slave-trade, and the enacting 
by Congress of a territorial slave-code. We 
must prevent each of these things being done 
by either congresses or courts. The people 
of these United States are the rightful masters 
of both congresses and courts, not to over- 
throw the Constitution, but to overthrow the 
men who pervert the Constitution. 

To do these things we must employ instru- 
mentalities. We must hold conventions; we 
must adopt platforms, if we conform to ordi- 
nary custom; we must nominate candidates; 
and we must carry elections. ... I should 
be glad to have some of the many good and 
able and noble men of the South to place 
themselves where we can confer upon them 
the high honor of an election upon one or the 
other end of our ticket. It would do my soul 
good to do that thing. It would enable us to 
teach them that, inasmuch as we select one of 
their own number to carry out our principles, 
we are free from the charge that we mean 
more than we say. — Speech at Cincinnati; 
September 17, 1859. 



88 



FROM the first appearance of man upon 
the earth down to very recent times, 
the words "stranger" and "enemy" were 
quite or almost synonymous. Long after 
civilized nations had defined robbery and 
murder as high crimes, and had affixed severe 
punishments to them, when practiced among 
and upon their own people respectively, it 
was deemed no off'ense, but even meritorious, 
to rob and murder and enslave strangers, 
whether as nations or as individuals. Even 
yet, this has not totally disappeared. The 
man of the highest moral cultivation, in spite 
of all which abstract principle can do, likes 
him whom he does know much better than 
him whom he does not know. To correct the 
evils, great and small, which spring from 
want of sympathy and from positive enmity 
among strangers, as nations or as individuals, 
is one of the highest functions of civilization. 
To this end our agricultural fairs contribute 
in no small degree. They render more pleas- 
ant, and more strong, and more durable the 
bond of social and political union among us. 

The effect of thorough cultivation upon the 
farmer's own mind, and in reaction through 
his mind back upon his business, is perhaps 
quite equal to any other of its effects. Every 
man is proud of what he does well, and no 
man is proud of that he does not well. With 
the former his heart is in his work, and he will 
do twice as much of it with less fatigue; the 



latter he performs a little iriiperfectly, looks 
at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines 
himself exceedingly tired — the little he has 
done comes to nothing for want of finishing. 

The world is agreed that labor is the source 
from which human wants are mainly supplied. 
There is no dispute upon this point. From 
this point, however, men immediately diverge. 
Much disputation is maintained as to the best 
way of applying and controlling the labor 
element. By some it is assumed that labor 
is available only in connection with capital — 
that nobody labors, unless somebody else 
owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, 
induces him to do it. Having assumed this, 
they proceed to consider whether it is best 
that capital shall hire laborers, and thus in- 
duce them to work by their own consent, or 
buy them, and drive them to it, without their 
consent. Having proceeded so far, they nat- 
urally conclude that all laborers are naturally 
either hired laborers or slaves. They further 
assume that whoever is once a hired laborer, 
is fatally fixed in that condition for life; and 
thence again, that his condition is as bad as, 
or worse than, that of a slave. This is the 
"mud-sill" theory.^ But another class of 
reasoners hold the opinion that there is no 

' Enunciated by James H. Hammond, Senator from 
South Carolina, 1857 to 1861. In a speech in the Senate 
he said that cultivated society necessarily rested on an 
inferior class, that of labor, just as a house stood on mud- 
sills : that is, sills lying directly on the ground. 

90 



such relation between capital and labor as 
assumed; that there is no such thing as a free 
man being fatally fixed for life in the condition 
of a hired laborer; that both these assump- 
tions are false, and all inferences from them 
groundless. They hold that labor is prior to, 
and independent of, capital; that, in fact, 
capital is the fruit of labor, and could never 
have existed if labor had not first existed; 
that labor can exist without capital, but that 
capital could never have existed without 
labor. Hence they hold that labor is the 
superior — greatly the superior — of capital. 
They do not deny that there is, and prob- 
ably always will be, a relation between labor 
and capital. The error, as they hold, is in 
assuming that the whole labor of the world 
exists within that relation. A few^ men own 
capital ; and that few avoid labor themselves, 
and with their capital hire or buy another few 
to labor for them. A large majority belong 
to neither class — neither work for others, 
nor have others working for them. Even in 
all our slave States except South Carolina, a 
majority of the whole people of all colors are 
neither slaves nor masters. In these free 
States, a large majority are neither hirers nor 
hired. Men, with their families — wives, 
sons, and daughters — work for themselves, 
on their farms, in their houses, and in their 
shops, taking the whole product to themselves, 
and asking no favors of capital on the one 
hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other. 

91 



It is not forgotten that a considerable number 
of persons mingle their own labor with capi- 
tal — that is, labor with their own hands, and 
also buy slaves or hire free men to labor for 
them; but this is only a mixed, and not a 
distinct, class. No principle stated is dis- 
turbed by the existence of this mixed class. 
Again, as has already been said, the oppo- 
nents of the "mud-sill" theory insist that 
there is not, of necessity, any such thing as 
the free hired laborer being fixed to that con- 
dition for life. There is demonstration for 
saying this. Many independent men in this 
assembly doubtless a few years ago were 
hired laborers. And their case is almost, if 
not quite, the general rule. 

The prudent, penniless beginner in the 
world labors for wages awhile, saves a sur- 
plus with which to buy tools or land for him- 
self, then labors on his own account another 
while, and at length hires another new begin- 
ner to help him. This, say its advocates, is 
free labor — the just, and generous, and 
prosperous system, which opens the way for 
all, gives hope to all, and energy, and prog- 
ress, and improvement of condition to all. 
If any continue through life in the condition 
of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the 
system, but because of either a dependent 
nature which prefers it, or improvidence, 
folly, or singular misfortune. I have said this 
much about the elements of labor generally, 
as introductory to the consideration of a new 
92 



phase which that element is in process of 
assuming. The old general rule was that 
educated people did not perform manual 
labor. They managed to eat their bread, leav- 
ing the toil of producing it to the uneducated. 
This was not an insupportable evil to the 
working bees, so long as the class of drones 
remained very small. But now, especially in 
these free States, nearly all are educated — 
quite too nearly all to leave the labor of the 
uneducated in any wise adequate to the sup- 
port of the whole. It follows from this that 
henceforth educated people must labor. 
Otherwise, education itself would become a 
positive and intolerable evil. No country can 
sustain in idleness more than a small per- 
centage of its numbers. The great majority 
must labor at something productive. From 
these premises the problem springs, "How 
can labor and education be the most satis- 
factorily combined?" 

By the "mud-sill" theory it is assumed that 
labor and education are incompatible, and 
any practical combination of them impossible. 
According to that theory, a blind horse upon 
a tread-mill is a perfect illustration of what a 
laborer should be — all the better for being 
blind, that he could not kick understandingly. 
According to that theory, the education of 
laborers is not only useless but pernicious and 
dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed 
a misfortune that laborers should have heads 
at all. Those same heads are regarded as 

93 



explosive materials, only to be safely kept in 
damp places, as far as possible from that 
peculiar sort of fire which ignites them. A 
Yankee who could invent a strong-handed 
man without a head would receive the ever- 
lasting gratitude of the "mud-sill" advocates. 
But free labor says, "No." Free labor 
argues that as the Author of man makes every 
individual with one head and one pair of 
hands, it was probably intended that heads 
and hands should co-operate as friends, and 
that that particular head should direct and 
control that pair of hands. As each man has 
one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to 
furnish food, it was probably intended that 
that particular pair of hands should feed that 
particular mouth — that each head is the 
natural guardian, director, and protector of 
the hands and mouth inseparably connected 
with it; and that being so, every head should 
be cultivated and improved by whatever will 
add to its capacity for performing its charge. 
In one word, free labor insists on universal 
education. 

Erelong the most valuable of all arts will 
be the art of deriving a comfortable subsist- 
ence from the smallest area of soil. No com- 
munity whose every member possesses this 
art, can ever be the victim of oppression in 
any of its forms. Such community will be 
alike independent of crowned kings, money 
kings, and land kings. 
94 



It is said an Eastern monarch once charged 
his wise men to invent him a sentence to be 
ever in view, and which should be true and 
appropriate in all times and situations. They 
presented him the words, "And this, too, 
shall pass away." How much it expresses! 
How chastening in the hour of pride ! How 
consoling in the depths of affliction! "And 
this, too, shall pass away." And yet, let us 
hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, 
that by the best cultivation of the physical 
world beneath and around us, and the intel- 
lectual and moral world within us, we shall 
secure an individual, social, and political pros- 
perity and happiness, whose course shall be 
onward and upward, and which, while the 
earth endures, shall not pass away. — Ad- 
dress at Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair; 
September 30, 1859. 



BUT you Democrats are for the Union ; and 
you greatly fear the success of the Repub- 
licans would destroy the Union. Why? Do 
the Republicans declare against the Union? 
nothing like it. Your own statement of it 
is that if the Black Republicans elect a Presi- 
dent, you "won't stand it." You will break 
up the Union. If we shall constitutionally 
elect a President, it will be our duty to see 
that you submit. Old John Brown has been 
executed for treason against a State. We 

95 



cannot object, even though he agreed with 
us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot 
excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It 
could avail him nothing that he might think 
himself right. So, if we constitutionally elect 
a President, and therefore you undertake to 
destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal 
with you as old John Brown has been dealt 
with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope 
and believe that in no section will a majority 
so act as to render such extreme measures 
necessary. — Speech at Leavenworth, Kan. ; 
December 5, 1859. 



AS Plato had for the immortality of the 
soul, so Young America has "a pleasing 
hope, a fond desire — a longing after" ter- 
ritory. He has a great passion — a perfect 
rage — for the new ; particularly new men 
for office, and the new earth mentioned in the 
Revelations, in which, being no more sea, 
there must be about three times as much land 
as in the present. He is a great friend of 
humanity; and his desire for land is not self- 
ish, but merely an impulse to extend the area 
of freedom. He is very anxious to fight for 
the liberation of enslaved nations and colo- 
nies, provided, always, they have land, and 
have not any liking for his interference. As 
to those who have no land, and would be glad 
of help from any quarter, he considers they 
can afford to wait a few hundred years longer. 
96 



In knowledge he is particularly rich. He 
knows all that can possibly be known; in- 
clines to believe in spiritual rappings, and is 
the unquestioned inventor of "Manifest Des- 
tiny." His horror is for all that is old, particu- 
larly "Old Fogy"; and if there be anything 
old which he can endure, it is only old whisky 
and old tobacco. 

If the said Young America really is, as he 
claims to be, the owner of all present, it must 
be admitted that he has considerable advan- 
tage of Old Fogy. Take, for instance, the 
first of all fogies. Father Adam. There he 
stood, a very perfect physical man, as poets 
and painters inform us; but he must have 
been very ignorant, and simple in his habits. 
He had had no sufficient time to learn much 
by observation, and he had no near neighbors 
to teach him anything. No part of his break- 
fast had been brought from the other side of 
the world; and it is quite probable he had no 
conception of the world having any other side. 
In all these things, it is very plain, he was no 
equal of Young America; the most that can 
be said is, that according to his chance he 
may have been quite as much of a man as his 
very self-complacent descendant. Little as 
was what he knew, let the youngster discard 
all he has learned from others, and then show, 
if he can, any advantage on his side. In the 
way of land and live-stock, Adam was quite 
in the ascendant. He had dominion over all 
the earth, and all the living things upon and 

7 97 



round about it. The land has been sadly 
divided out since; but never fret, Young 
America will re-annex it. 

The great difference between Young Amer- 
ica and Old Fogy is the result of discoveries, 
inventions, and improvements. These, in 
turn, are the result of observation, reflection, 
and experiment. ... All nature — the whole 
world, material, moral, and intellectual — is 
a mine; and in Adam's day it was a wholly 
unexplored mine. Now, it was the destined 
work of Adam's race to develop, by discov- 
eries, inventions, and improvements, the hid- 
den treasures of this mine. But Adam had 
nothing to turn his attention to the work. 
If he should do anything in the way of in- 
ventions, he had first to invent the art of 
invention, the instance, at least, if not the 
habit, of observation and reflection. As 
might be expected, he seems not to have 
been a very observing man at first; for it 
appears he went about naked a considerable 
length of time before he ever noticed that 
obvious fact. But when he did observe it, 
the observation was not lost upon him; for 
it immediately led to the first of all inventions 
of which we have any direct account — the 
fig-leaf apron. 

The inclination to exchange thoughts with 
one another is probably an original impulse 
of our nature. If I be in pain, I wish to let 
you know it, and to ask your sympathy and 
assistance; and my pleasurable emotions also 
98 



I 



I wish to communicate to and share with you. 
But to carry on such communications, some 
instrumentality is indispensable. Accord- 
ingly, speech — articulate sounds rattled off 
from the tongue — was used by our first 
parents, and even by Adam before the crea- 
tion of Eve. He gave names to the animals 
while she was still a bone in his side; and he 
broke out quite volubly when she first stood 
before him, the best present of his Maker. 
From this it would appear that speech was not 
an invention of man, but rather the direct gift 
of his Creator. But whether divine gift or in- 
vention, it is still plain that if a mode of com- 
munication had been left to invention, speech 
must have been the first, from the superior 
adaptation to the end of the organs of speech 
over every other means within the whole range 
of nature. . . . 

Speech, then, by enabling different individ- 
uals to interchange thoughts, and thereby to 
combine their powers of observation and re- 
flection, greatly facilitates useful discoveries 
and inventions. . . . And this reminds me 
of what I passed unnoticed before, that the 
very first invention was a joint operation. Eve 
having shared with Adam the getting up of 
the apron. And, indeed, judging from the 
fact that sewing has come down to our times 
as "woman's work," it is very probable she 
took the leading part, — he, perhaps, doing 
no more than to stand by and thread the 
needle. 'J'hat proceeding may be reckoned 

99 



as the mother of all "sewing-societies," and 
the first and most perfect "World's Fair," 
all inventions and all inventors then in the 
world being on the spot. . . , 

But speech alone, valuable as it ever has 
been and is, has not advanced the condition 
of the world much. This is abundantly evi- 
dent when we look at the degraded condition 
of all those tribes of human creatures who 
have no considerable additional means of 
communicating thoughts. Writing, the art of 
communicating thoughts to the mind through 
the eye, is the great invention of the world. 
Great is the astonishing range of analysis and 
combination which necessarily underlies the 
most crude and general conception of it — 
great, very great, in enabling us to converse 
with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, 
at all distances of time and space ; and great, 
not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help 
to all other inventions. . . . The precise 
period at which writing was invented is not 
known, but it certainly was as early as the 
time of Moses; from which we may safely 
infer that its inventors were very old 
fogies. . . . 

When we remember that words are sounds 
merely, we shall conclude that the idea of 
representing those sounds by marks, so that 
whoever should at any time after see the 
marks would understand what sounds they 
meant, was a bold and ingenious conception, 
not likely to occur to one man in a million in 



the run of a thousand years. And when it 
did occur, a distinct mark for each word, giv- 
ing twenty thousand different marks first to 
be learned, and afterward to be remembered, 
would follow as the second thought, and 
would present such a difficulty as would lead 
to the conclusion that the whole thing was 
impracticable. But the necessity still would 
exist; and we may readily suppose that the 
idea was conceived, and lost, and reproduced, 
and dropped, and taken up again and again, 
until at last the thought of dividing sounds 
into parts, and making a mark, not to repre- 
sent a whole sound, but only a part of one, 
and then of combining those marks, not very 
many in number, upon principles of permu- 
tation, so as to represent any and all of the 
whole twenty thousand words, and even any 
additional number, was somehow conceived 
and pushed into practice. This was the in- 
vention of phonetic writing, as distinguished 
from the clumsy picture-writing of some of 
the nations. That it was difficult of concep- 
tion and execution is apparent, as well by the 
foregoing reflection, as the fact that so many 
tribes of men have come down from Adam's 
time to our own without ever having possessed 
it. Its utility may be conceived by the reflec- 
tion that to it we owe everything which dis- 
tinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, 
and the Bible, all history, all science, all gov- 
ernment, all commerce, and nearly all social 
intercourse go with it. . . . 



Printing came in 1436, or nearly three 
thousand years after writing. ... It is but 
the other half, and in reahty the better half, 
of writing; and . . , both together are but 
the assistants of speech in the communication 
of thoughts between man and man. When 
man was possessed of speech alone, the chances 
of invention, discovery, and improvement 
were very limited; but by the introduction of 
each of these they were greatly multiplied. 
When writing was invented, any important 
observation likely to lead to a discovery had 
at least a chance of being written down, and 
consequently a little chance of never being 
forgotten, and of being seen and reflected 
upon by a much greater number of persons; 
and thereby the chances of a valuable hint 
being caught proportionately augmented. By 
this means the observation of a single indi- 
vidual might lead to an important invention 
years, and even centuries, after he was dead. 
In one word, by means of writing, the seeds 
of invention were more permanently pre- 
served and more widely sown. And yet for 
three thousand years during which printing 
remained undiscovered after writing was in 
use, it was only a small portion of the people 
who could write, or read writing; and con- 
sequently the field of invention, though much 
extended, still continued very limited. At 
length printing came. It gave ten thousand 
copies of any written matter quite as cheaply 
as ten were given before; and consequently 



a thousand minds were brought into the field 
where there was but one before. This was 
a great gain — and history shows a great 
change corresponding to it — in point of 
time. 

I will venture to consider it the true termi- 
nation of that period called "the dark ages." 
Discoveries, inventions, and improvements 
followed rapidly, and have been increasing 
their rapidity ever since. The effects could 
not come all at once. It required time to 
bring them out; and they are still comings 
The capacity to read could not be multiplied 
as fast as the means of reading. Spelling- 
books just began to go into the hands of the 
children, but the teachers were not very nu- 
merous or very competent, so that it is safe to 
infer they did not advance so speedily as they 
do nowadays. It is very probable — almost 
certain — that the great mass of men at that 
time were utterly unconscious that their con- 
dition or their minds were capable of improve- 
ment. They not only looked upon the 
educated few as superior beings, but they 
supposed themselves to be naturally inca- 
pable of rising to equality. To emancipate the 
mind from this false underestimate of itself 
is the great task which printing came into 
the world to perform. It is difficult for us now 
and here to conceive how strong this slavery 
of the mind was, and how long it did of neces- 
sity take to break its shackles, and to get a 
habit of freedom of thought established. It 
103 



is, in this connection, a curious fact that a 
new country is most favorable — almost 
necessary — to the emancipation of thought, 
and the consequent advancement of civiliza- 
tion and the arts, ... In anciently inhabited 
countries, the dust of ages — a real, dov^^n- 
right old-fogyism — seems to settle upon and 
smother the intellect and energies of man. It 
is in this view that I have mentioned the dis- 
covery of America as an event greatly favor- 
ing and facilitating useful discoveries and 
inventions. Next came the patent laws. 
These began in England in 1624, and in this 
country with the adoption of our Constitution. 
Before then any man [might] instantly use 
what another man had invented, so that the 
inventor had no special advantage from his 
invention. The patent system changed this, 
secured to the inventor for a Hmited time ex- 
clusive use of his inventions, and thereby 
added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius 
in the discovery and production of new and 
useful things. — Lecture on ^^Discoveries, In- 
ventions, and Improvements," before the Spring- 
field (III.) Library Association; February 22, 
i860. 



AND now, if they would listen, — as I sup- 
pose they will not, — I would address a 
few words to the Southern people. . . . 

You say we are sectional. We deny it. 
That makes an issue; and the burden of 
104 



proof is upon you. You produce your proof; 
and what is it? Why, that our party has no 
existence in your section — gets no votes in 
your section. The fact is substantially true; 
but does it prove the issue ? If it does, then 
in case we should, without change of principle, 
begin to get votes in your section, we should 
thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot 
escape this conclusion; and yet, are you will- 
ing to abide by it? . . . 

The fact that we get no votes in your sec- 
tion is a fact of your making, and not of ours. 
And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is 
primarily yours, and remains so until you 
show that we repel you by some wrong prin- 
ciple or practice. If we do repel you by any 
wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; 
but this brings you to where you ought to have 
started — to a discussion of the right or wrong 
of our principle. If our principle, put in 
practice, would wrong your section for the 
benefit of ours, or for any other object, then 
our principle, and we with it, are sectional, 
and are justly opposed and denounced as such. 
Meet us, then, on the question of whether 
our principle, put in practice, would wrong 
your section ; and so meet us as if it were pos- 
sible that something may be said on our side. 
Do you accept the challenge? No! Then 
you really believe that the principle which 
*' our fathers who framed the government 
under which we live" thought so clearly right 
as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, 



upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly 
wrong as to demand your condemnation with- 
out a moment's consideration. . . . 

Again, you say we have made the slavery 
question more prominent than it formerly was. 
We deny it. We admit that it is more promi- 
nent, but we deny that we made it so. It was 
not we, but you, who discarded the old policy 
of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, 
your innovation; and thence comes the 
greater prominence of the question. Would 
you have that question reduced to its former 
proportions? Go back to that old policy. 
What has been will be again, under the same 
conditions. If you would have the peace of 
the old times, readopt the precepts and policy 
of the old times. . . . 

But you will break up the Union rather 
than submit to a denial of your constitutional 
rights. 

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but 
it would be palliated, if not fully justified, 
were we proposing, by the mere force of num- 
bers, to deprive you of some right plainly 
written down in the Constitution. But we 
are proposing no such thing. 

When you make these declarations you 
have a specific and well-understood allusion 
to an assumed constitutional right of yours 
to take slaves into the Federal Territories, 
and to hold them there as property. But no 
such right is specifically written in the Con- 
stitution. That instrument is literally silent 
1 06 



about any such right. We, on the contrary, 
deny that such a right has any existence in 
the Constitution, even by implication. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that 
you will destroy the government, unless you 
be allowed to construe and force the Consti- 
tution as you please, on all points in dispute 
between you and us. You will rule or ruin 
in all events. . . . 

But you will not abide the election of a 
Republican president ! In that supposed 
event, you say, you will destroy the Union; 
and then, you say, the great crime of having 
destroyed it will be upon us ! That is cool. 
A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and 
mutters through his teeth, "Stand and de- 
liver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be 
a murderer!" 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet 
afiford to let it alone where it is, because that 
much is due to the necessity arising from its 
actual presence in the nation; but can we, 
while our votes will prevent it, allow it to 
spread into the national Territories and to 
overrun us here in these free States? 

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us 
stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. 
Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical 
contrivances wherewith we are so industri- 
ously plied and belabored — contrivances 
such as groping for some middle ground be- 
tween the right and the wrong; vain as tlie 
107 



search for a man who should be neither a 
living man nor a dead man ; such as a policy 
of "don't care" on a question about which 
all true men do care; such as Union appeals 
beseeching true Union men to yield to Dis- 
unionists, reversing the divine rule, and call- 
ing, not the sinners, but the righteous to re- 
pentance; such as invocations to Washington, 
imploring men to unsay what Washington 
said and undo what Washington did. 

Neither let us be slandered from our duty 
by false accusations against us, nor fright- 
ened from it by menaces of destruction to the 
government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. 
Let us have faith that right makes might ; and 
in that faith let us to the end dare to do our 
duty as we understand it. — Speech at Cooper 
Union, New York; February 27, i860. 



ONE SIXTH, and a little more, of the pop- 
ulation of the United States are slaves, 
looked upon as property, as nothing but prop- 
erty. The cash value of these slaves, at a 
moderate estimate, is $2,000,000,000. This 
amount of property value has a vast influence 
on the minds of its owners, very naturally. 
The same amount of property would have an 
equal influence upon us if owned in the North. 
Human nature is the same — people at the 
South are the same as those at the North, 
barring the difference in circumstances. Pub- 
lic opinion is founded, to a great extent, on 
108 



a property basis. What lessens the value of 
property is opposed ; what enhances its value 
is favored. Public opinion at the South re- 
gards slaves as property, and insists upon 
treating them like other property. 

On the other hand, the free States carry on 
their government on the principle of the equal- 
ity of men. We think slavery is morally 
wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. 
We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I 
think, by natural theology, apart from revela- 
tion. Every man, black, white, or yellow, has 
a mouth to be fed, and two hands with which 
to feed it — and bread should be allowed to 
go to that mouth without controversy. 

Slavery is wrong in its effect upon white 
people and free labor. It is the only thing 
that threatens the Union. It makes what 
Senator Seward has been much abused for 
calling an "irrepressible conflict." When 
they get ready to settle it, we hope they will 
let us know. Public opinion settles every 
question here; any policy to be permanent 
must have public opinion at the bottom — 
something in accordance with the philosophy 
of the human mind as it is. The property 
basis will have its weight. The love of prop- 
erty and a consciousness of right or wrong 
have conflicting places in our organization, 
which often make a man's course seem 
crooked, his conduct a riddle. 

Some men would make it a question of in- 
difference, neither right nor wrong, merely 
109 



a question of dollars and cents ; — the AV 
mighty has drawn a line across the land, be- 
low which it must be cultivated by slave labor, 
above which by free labor. They would say : 
"If the question is between the white man 
and the negro, I am for the white man; if 
between the negro and the crocodile, I am for 
the negro." There is a strong effort to make 
this policy of indifference prevail, but it can- 
not be a durable one. A "don't care" policy 
won't prevail, for everybody does care. . . . 

The proposition that there is a struggle be- 
tween the white man and the negro contains 
a falsehood. There is no struggle. If there 
was, I should be for the white man. If two 
men are adrift at sea on a plank which will 
bear up but one, the law justifies either in 
pushing the other off. I never had to struggle 
to keep a negro from enslaving me, nor did 
a negro ever have to fight to keep me from 
enslaving him. . . . 

If the Republicans, who think slavery is 
wrong, get possession of the General Govern- 
ment, we may not root out the evil at once, 
but may at least prevent its extension. If I 
find a venomous snake lying on the open 
prairie, I seize the first stick and kill him at 
once; but if that snake is in bed with my 
children, I must be more cautious; — I shall, 
in striking the snake, also strike the children, 
or arouse the reptile to bite the children. 
Slavery is the venomous snake in bed with the 
children. But if the question is whether to 



kill it on the prairie or put it in bed with the 
other children, I am inclined to think we 'd 
kill it. 

The Democracy are given to bushwhack- 
ing. After having their errors and misstate- 
ments continually thrust in their faces, they 
pay no heed, but go on how^ling about Seward 
and the "irrepressible conflict." That is 
bushwhacking. So with John Brown and 
Harper's Ferry. They charge it upon the 
Republican party, and ignominiously fail in 
all attempts to substantiate the charge. Yet 
they go on with their bushwhacking, the pack 
in full cry after John Brown. The Democrats 
had just been whipped in Ohio and Pennsyl- 
vania, and seized upon the unfortunate Har- 
per's Ferry affair to influence other elections 
then pending. They said to each other, 
"Jump in; now 's your chance"; and were 
sorry there were no more killed. But they 
did n't succeed well. Let them go on with 
their howling. They will succeed when by 
slandering women you get them to love you, 
and by slandering men you get them to vote 
for you. — Speech at Hartford, Conn. ; March 
5, i860. 



NOW, gentlemen, the Republicans desire 
to place this great question of slavery 
on the very basis on which our fathers placed 
it, and no other. It is easy to demonstrate 
III 



that "our fathers who framed this govern- 
ment under which we live" looked on slavery 
as wrong, and so framed it and everything 
about it as to square with the idea that it was 
wrong, so far as the necessities arising from 
its existence permitted. In forming the Con- 
stitution they found the slave-trade existing, 
capital invested in it, fields depending upon 
it for labor, and the whole system resting 
upon the importation of slave labor. They 
therefore did not prohibit the slave-trade at 
once, but they gave the power to prohibit it 
after twenty years. Why was this? What 
other foreign trade did they treat in that way ? 
Would they have done this if they had not 
thought slavery wrong? 

Another thing was done by some of the 
same men who framed the Constitution, and 
afterward adopted as their own act by the 
first Congress held under that Constitution, 
of which many of the framers were members 
— they prohibited the spread of slavery in 
the Territories. Thus the same men, the 
framers of the Constitution, cut off the supply 
and prohibited the spread of slavery; and 
both acts show conclusively that they con- 
sidered that the thing was wrong. 

If additional proof is wanting, it can be 
found in the phraseology of the Constitution. 
When men are framing a supreme law and 
chart of government to secure blessings and 
prosperity to untold generations yet to come, 
they use language as short and direct and 



plain as can be found to express their mean- 
ing. In all matters but this of slavery the 
framers of the Constitution used the very 
clearest, shortest, and most direct language. 
But the Constitution alludes to slavery three 
times without mentioning it once ! The 
language used becomes ambiguous, round- 
about, and mystical. They speak of the "im- 
migration of persons," and mean the importa- 
tion of slaves, but do not say so. In estab- 
lishing a basis of representation they say "all 
other persons," when they mean to say slaves. 
Why did they not use the shortest phrase? 
In providing for the return of fugitives they 
say "persons held to service or labor." If 
they had said "slaves," it would have been 
plainer and less liable to misconstruction. 
Why did n't they do it ? We cannot doubt 
that it was done on purpose. Only one reason 
is possible, and that is supplied us by one of 
the framers of the Constitution — and it is 
not possible for man to conceive of any other. 
They expected and desired that the system 
would come to an end, and meant that when 
it did the Constitution should not show that 
there ever had been a slave in this good free 
country of ours. 

I am glad to see that a system of labor pre- 
vails in New England under which laborers 
can strike when they want to, where they are 
not obliged to work under all circumstances, 
and are not tied down and obliged to labor 
8 113 



whether you pay them or not ! I like the 
system which lets a man quit when he wants 
to, and wish it might prevail everywhere. One 
of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is 
just here. What is the true condition of the 
laborer? I take it that it is best for all to 
leave each man free to acquire property as 
fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I 
don't believe in a law to prevent a man from 
getting rich; it would do more harm than 
good. So while we do not propose any war 
upon capital, we do wish to allow the hum- 
blest man an equal chance to get rich with 
everybody else. When one starts poor, as 
most do in the race of life, free society is such 
that he knows he can better his condition; 
he knows that there is no fixed condition of 
labor for his whole life. I am not ashamed 
to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a 
hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a 
flatboat — just what might happen to any 
poor man's son. I want every man to have 
the chance — and I believe a black man is 
entitled to it — in which he can better his 
condition — when he may look forward and 
hope to be a hired laborer this year and the 
next, work for himself afterward, and finally 
to hire men to work for him. That is the true 
system. Up here in New England you have 
a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, 
and yet where will you find wealthy men so 
wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity ? 
There is not another such place on earth I I 
114 



desire that if you get too thick here, and find 
it hard to better your condition on this soil, 
you may have a chance to strike out and go 
somewhere else, where you may not be de- 
graded, nor have your family corrupted by 
forced rivalry with negro slaves. I want you 
to have a clean bed and no snakes in it ! Then 
you can better your condition, and so it may 
go on and on in one ceaseless round so long 
as man exists on the face of the earth. — 
Speech at New Haven; March 6, i860. 

I HAVE received the speech and book 
which you sent me. . . . Both seem to be 
well written, and contain many things with 
which I could agree, and some with which I 
could not. A specimen of the latter is the dec- 
laration, in the closing remarks upon the 
"speech," that the institution is a "neces- 
sity" imposed on us by the negro race. That 
the going many thousand miles, seizing a 
set of savages, bringing them here, and mak- 
ing slaves of them is a necessity imposed on 
us by them involves a species of logic to which 
my mind will scarcely assent. — Letter to 
C. H. Fisher ; August 27, i860. 

I APPRECIATE your motive when you 
suggest the propriety of my writing for 
the public something disclaiming all intention 
to interfere with slaves or slavery in the States; 
but in my judgment it would do no good. I 

"5 



have already done this many, many times; 
and it is in print, and open to all who will 
read. Those who will not read or heed what 
I have already publicly said would not read 
or heed a repetition of it. "If they hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
— Letter to William S. Speer ; October 23, 
i860. 

WHEN the people rise in mass in behalf 
of the Union and the liberties of this 
country, truly may it be said, "The gates of 
hell cannot prevail against them." In all 
trying positions in which I shall be placed, 
and doubtless I shall be placed in many such, 
my reliance will be upon you and the people 
of the United States; and I wish you to re- 
member, now and forever, that it is your busi- 
ness, and not mine ; that if the union of these 
States and the liberties of this people shall be 
lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two 
years of age, but a great deal to the thirty 
millions of people who inhabit these United 
States, and to their posterity in all coming 
time. — Remarks at Indianapolis ; February 
II, 1861. 

IN their [the Secessionists'] view, the Union 
as a family relation would seem to be no 
regular marriage, but rather a sort of "free- 
love" arrangement, to be maintained only 
116 



on "passional attraction." By the way, in 
what consists the special sacredness of a 
State? I speak not of the position assigned 
to a State in the Union by the Constitution; 
for that, by the bond, we all recognize. That 
position, however, a State cannot carry out 
of the Union with it. I speak of that assumed 
primary right of a State to rule all which is 
less than itself, and ruin all which is larger 
than itself. If a State and a county, in a given 
case, should be equal in e.xtent of territory, 
and equal in number of inhabitants, in what, 
as a matter of principle, is the State better 
than the county? Would an exchange of 
names be an exchange of rights upon princi- 
ple? On what rightful principle may a State, 
being not more than one-fiftieth part of the 
nation in soil and population, break up the 
nation and then coerce a proportionally larger 
subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way ? 
What mysterious right to play tyrant is con- 
ferred on a district of country with its people, 
by merely calling it a State? Fellow-citizens, 
I am not asserting anything; I am merely 
asking questions for you to consider. — Re- 
marks to the Indiana Legislature ; February 
12, 1861. 

I AGREE with you, Mr. Chairman, that the 
working-men are the basis of all govern- 
ments, for the plain reason that they are the 
more numerous. . . . 

Mr. Chairman, I hold that while man exists 
117 



it is his duty to improve not only his own con- 
dition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind; 
and therefore, without entering upon the 
details of the question, I will simply say that 
I am for those means which will give the 
greatest good to the greatest number. 

In regard to the homestead law, I have to 
say that in so far as the government lands can 
be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the 
wild lands into parcels, so that every poor 
man may have a home. 

In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I 
esteem them no better than other people, nor 
any worse. It is not my nature, when I see 
a people borne down by the weight of their 
shackles — the oppression of tyranny — to 
make their life more bitter by heaping upon 
them greater burdens; but rather would I 
do all in my power to raise the yoke than to 
add anything that would tend to crush them. 

Inasmuch as our country is extensive and 
new, and the countries of Europe are densely 
populated, if there are any abroad who desire 
to make this the land of their adoption, it is 
not in my heart to throw aught in their way 
to prevent them from coming to the United 
States. — Remarks to Germans at Cincinnati ; 
February 12, 1861. 



THERE is no crisis but an artificial one. 
What is there now to warrant the con- 
dition of affairs presented by our friends over 



the river? Take even their own view of the 
questions involved, and there is nothing to 
justify the course they are pursuing. I re- 
peat, then, there is no crisis^ excepting such 
a one as may be gotten up at any time by 
turbulent men aided by designing politicians. 
My advice to them, under such circumstances, 
is to keep cool. If the great American people 
only keep their temper on both sides of the 
line, the troubles will come to an end, and 
the question which now distracts the country 
will be settled, just as surely as all other diffi- 
culties of a like character which have originated 
in this government have been adjusted. Let 
the people on both sides keep their self-pos- 
session, and just as other clouds have cleared 
away in due time, so will this great nation con- 
tinue to prosper as heretofore. 

It is often said that the tariff is the specialty 
of Pennsylvania. Assuming that direct taxa- 
tion is not to be adopted, the tariff question 
must be as durable as the government itself. 
It is a question of national housekeeping. It 
is to the government what replenishing the 
meal-tub is to the family. Ever-varying 
circumstances will require frequent modifica- 
tions as to the amount needed and the sources 
of supply. So far there is little difference of 
opinion among the people. It is as to whether 
and how far, duties on imports shall be ad- 
justed to favor home production in the home 
market, that controversy begins. One party 
119 



insists that such adjustment oppresses one 
class for the advantage of another; while the 
other party argues that, with all its incidents, 
in the long run all classes are benefited. . . . 
I have by no means a thoroughly matured 
judgment upon this subject, especially as to 
details; some general ideas are about all. I 
have long thought it would be to our advan- 
tage to produce any necessary article at home 
which can be made of as good quality and 
with as little labor at home as abroad, at least 
by the difference of the carrying from abroad. 
In such case the carrying is demonstrably a 
dead loss of labor. For instance, labor being 
the true standard of value, is it not plain that 
if equal labor get a bar of raihoad iron out of 
a mine in England, and another out of a mine 
in Pennsylvania, each can be laid down in a 
track at home cheaper than they could ex- 
change countries, at least by the carriage? 
If there be a present cause why one can be 
both made and carried cheaper in money 
price than the other can be made without 
carrying, that cause is an unnatural and in- 
jurious one, and ought gradually, if not 
rapidly, to be removed. — Remarks at Pitts- 
burg; February 15, 1861. 



THERE is nothing that could ever bring 
me to consent — willingly to consent — 
to the destruction of this Union (in which not 
only the great city of New York, but the 



whole country, has acquired its greatness), 
unless it would be that thing for which the 
Union itself was made. I understand that 
the ship is made for the carrying and preser- 
vation of the cargo; and so long as the ship 
is safe with the cargo, it shall not be aban- 
doned. This Union shall never be abandoned, 
unless the possibility of its existence shall 
cease to exist without the necessity of throw- 
ing passengers and cargo overboard. — Re- 
marks at New York; February 20, 1861. 



AWAY back in my childhood, the earliest 
days of my being able to read, I got 
hold of a small book, . . . Weems' "Life of 
Washington." I remember all the accounts 
there given of the battle-fields and struggles 
[of our forefathers] for the liberties of the 
country. ... I recollect thinking then, boy 
even though I was, that there must have been 
something more than common that these men 
struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that 
that thing — that something even more than 
national independence; that something that 
held out a great promise to all the people of 
the world to all time to come — I am exceed- 
ingly anxious that this Union, the Constitu- 
tion, and the liberties of the people shall be 
perpetuated in accordance with the original 
idea for which that struggle was made, and I 
shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a 
humble instrument in the hands of the Al- 



mighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, 
for perpetuating the object of that great strug- 
gle, — Remarks to the Senate of New Jersey; 
February 21, 1861. 



IT was not the mere matter of separation 
of the colonies from the motherland, but 
that sentiment in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence which gave liberty not alone to the 
people of this country, but hope to all the 
world, for all future time. It was that which 
gave promise that in due time the weights 
would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, 
and that all should have an equal chance. 
This is the sentiment embodied in the Decla- 
ration of Independence. Now, my friends, 
can this country be saved on that basis? If 
it can, I will consider myself one of the hap- 
piest men in the world if I can help to save it. 
If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it 
will be truly awful. But if this country can- 
not be saved without giving up that principle, 
I was about to say I would rather be assas- 
sinated on this spot than surrender it. — Re- 
marks in Independence Hall, Philadelphia; 
February 22, 1861. 



1HOLD that, in contemplation of universal 
law and of the Constitution, the Union of 
these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is im- 
plied, if not expressed, in the fundamental 
122 



law of all national governments. It is safe to 
assert that no government proper ever had a 
provision in its organic law for its own termi- 
nation. Continue to execute all the express 
provisions of our National Constitution, and 
the Union will endure forever — it being im- 
possible to destroy it except by some action 
not provided for in the instrument itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a govern- 
ment proper, but an association of States in 
the nature of contract merely, can it, as a con- 
tract, be peaceably unmade by less than all 
the parties who made it? One party to a 
contract may violate it — break it, so to 
speak; but does it not require all to lawfully 
rescind it? . . . 

It follows from these views that no State 
upon its own mere motion can lawfully get 
out of the Union; that resolves and ordi- 
nances to that effect are legally void; and 
that acts of violence, within any State or 
States, against the authority of the United 
States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, 
according to circumstances. 

I therefore consider that, in view of the 
Constitution and the laws, the Union is un- 
broken; and to the extent of my ability I 
shall take care, as the Constitution itself ex- 
pressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the 
Union be faithfully executed in all the States. 
Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty 
on my part; and I shall perform it so far as 
practicable, unless my rightful masters, the 
123 



American people, shall withhold the requisite 
means, or in some authoritative manner 
direct the contrary. I trust this will not be 
regarded as a menace, but only as the declared 
purpose of the Union that it will constitution- 
ally defend and maintain itself. 

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed 
or violence; and there shall be none, unless 
it be forced upon the national authority. The 
power confided to me will be used to hold, 
occupy, and possess the property and places 
belonging to the government, and to collect 
the duties and imposts; but beyond what 
may be necessary for these objects, there will 
be no invasion, no using of force against or 
among the people anywhere. . . . 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to 
be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far 
as possible, the people everywhere shall have 
that sense of perfect security which is most 
favorable to calm thought and reflection. 

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the 
essence of anarchy. A majority held in re- 
straint by constitutional checks and limita- 
tions, and always changing easily with delib- 
erate changes of popular opinions and senti- 
ments, is the only true sovereign of a free 
people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, 
fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is 
impossible; the rule of a minority, as a per- 
manent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; 
so that, rejecting the majority principle, an- 
124 



archy or despotism in some form is all that 
is left. 

Physically speaking, wc cannot separate. 
We cannot remove our respective sections 
from each other, nor build an impassable wall 
between them. A husband and wife may be 
divorced, and go out of the presence and be- 
yond the reach of each other; but the differ- 
ent parts of our country cannot do this. They 
cannot but remain face to face, and inter- 
course, either amicable or hostile, must con- 
tinue between them. Is it possible, then, to 
make that intercourse more advantageous or 
more satisfactory after separation than be- 
fore? Can aliens make treaties easier than 
friends can make laws? Can treaties be more 
faithfully enforced between aliens than laws 
can among friends? Suppose you go to war, 
you cannot fight always; and when, after 
much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, 
you cease fighting, the identical old questions 
as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, belongs 
to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they 
shall grow weary of the existing government, 
they can exercise their constitutional right of 
amending it, or their revolutionary right to 
dismember or overthrow it. . . . 

Why should there not be a patient confi- 
dence in the ultimate justice of the people? 
Is there any better or equal hope in the world ? 
In our present differences is either party with- 
125 



out faith of being in the right? If the Al- 
mighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal 
truth and justice, be on your side of the 
North, or on yours of the South, that truth 
and that justice will surely prevail by the 
judgment of this great tribunal of the Ameri- 
can people. . . . 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
tous issue of civil war. The government will 
not assail you. You can have no conflict 
without being yourselves the aggressors. You 
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy 
the government, while I shall have the most 
solemn one to "preserve, protect, and de- 
fend it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
but friends. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained, it must 
not break our bonds of affection. The mystic 
chords of memory, stretching from every 
battle-field and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union 
when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature. — First 
Inaugural Address ; March 4, 1861. 



MUCH is said about the "sovereignty" 
of the States; but the word even is not 
in the National Constitution, nor, as is be- 
lieved, in any of the State constitutions. What 
126 



is "sovereignty" in the political sense of the 
term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a 
political community without a political su- 
perior" ? Tested by this, no one of our States 
except Texas ever was a sovereignty. And 
even Texas gave up the character on coming 
into the Union; by which act she acknowl- 
edged the Constitution of the United States, 
and the laws and treaties of the United States 
made in pursuance of the Constitution, to be 
for her the supreme law of the land. The 
States have their status in the Union, and 
they have no other legal status. If they break 
from this, they can only do so against law 
and by revolution. The Union, and not 
themselves separately, procured their inde- 
pendence and their liberty. By conquest or 
purchase the Union gave each of them what- 
ever of independence or liberty it has. The 
Union is older than any of the States, and, 
in fact, it created them as States. Originally 
some dependent colonies made the Union, 
and, in turn, the Union threw off their old 
dependence for them, and made them States, 
such as they are. Not one of them ever 
had a State constitution independent of the 
Union. . . . 

This relative matter of national power and 
State rights, as a principle, is no other than 
the principle of generality and locality. 
Whatever concerns the whole should be con- 
fided to the whole — to the General Govern- 
ment ; while whatever concerns only the State 
127 



should be left exclusively to the State. This 
IS all there is of the original principle about 
It. Whether the National Constitution in 
defining boundaries between the two has ap- 
plied the principle with exact accuracy, is not 
to be questioned. We are all bound by that 
defining, without question. 

It might seem, at first thought, to be of 
httle difference whether the present move- 
ment at the South be called "secession" or 
"rebellion." The movers, however, will 
understand the difference. At the beginning 
they knew they could never raise their treason 
to any respectable magnitude by any name 
which implies violation of law. They knew 
their people possessed as much of moral sense, 
as much of devotion to law and order, and 
as much pride in and reverence for the history 
and government of their common country as 
any other civilized and patriotic people. 
They knew they could make no advancement 
directly in the teeth of these strong and noble 
sentiments. Accordingly, they commenced 
by an msidious debauching of the public 
mind. They invented an ingenious sophism 
which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly 
logical steps, through all the incidents, to the 
complete destruction of the Union. The 
sophism itself is that any State of the Union 
may consistently with the National Constitu- 
tion, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, 
withdraw from the Union without the con- 
sent of the Union or of any other State. The 
128 



little disguise that the supposed right is to be 
exercised only for just cause, themselves to 
be the sole judges of its justice, is too thin to 
merit any notice. 

With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have 
been drugging the public mind of their section 
for more than thirty years, and until at length 
they have brought many good men to a will- 
ingness to take up arms against the govern- 
ment the day after some assemblage of men 
have enacted the farcical pretense of taking 
their State out of the Union, who could have 
been brought to no such thing the day before. 

This sophism derives much, perhaps the 
whole, of its currency from the assumption 
that there is some omnipotent and sacred su- 
premacy pertaining to a State — to each State 
of our Federal Union. Our States have 
neither more nor less power than that reserved 
to them in the Union by the Constitution — 
no one of them ever having been a State out 
of the Union. The original ones passed into 
the Union even before they cast ofif their 
British colonial dependence; and the new 
ones each came into the Union directly from 
a condition of dependence, excepting Texas. 
. . . Nothing should ever be implied as law 
which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. 
The nation purchased with money the coun- 
tries out of which several of these States were 
formed. Is it just that they shall go ofif with- 
out leave and without refunding? . . . The 
nation is now in debt for money applied to the 
9 129 



benefit of these so-called seceding States in 
common with the rest. Is it just either that 
creditors shall go unpaid or the remaining 
States pay the whole? . . . 

Again, if one State may secede, so may an- 
other; and when all shall have seceded, none 
is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to 
creditors? Did we notify them of this sage 
view of ours when we borrowed their money ? 
If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing 
the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see 
what we can do if others choose to go or to 
extort terms upon which they will promise to 
remain. 

The seceders insist that our Constitution 
admits of secession. They have assumed to 
make a national constitution of their own, in 
which of necessity they have either discarded 
or retained the right of secession as they insist 
it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, 
they thereby admit that on principle it ought 
not to be in ours. If they have retained it by 
their own construction of ours, they show that 
to be consistent they must secede from one 
another whenever they shall find it the easiest 
way of settling their debts, or effecting any 
other selfish or unjust object. The principle 
itself is one of disintegration, and upon which 
no government can possibly endure. 

If all the States save one should assert the 

power to drive that one out of the Union, it is 

presumed the whole class of seceder politicians 

would at once deny the power and denounce 

130 



the act as the greatest outrage upon State 
right. But suppose that precisely the same 
act, instead of being called "driving the one 
out," should be called "the seceding of the 
others from that one," it would be exactly 
what the seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, 
they make the point that the one, because it 
is a minority, may rightfully do what the 
others, because they are a majority, may not 
rightfully do. These politicians are subtle 
and profound on the rights of minorities. 
They are not partial to that power which 
made the Constitution and speaks from the 
preamble calling itself "We, the People." 

It may be affirmed without extravagance 
that the free institutions we enjoy have devel- 
oped the powers and improved the condition 
of our whole people beyond any example in 
the world. Of this we now have a striking 
and impressive illustration. So large an 
army as the government has now on foot was 
never before known, without a soldier in it 
but who has taken his place there of his own 
free choice. But more than this, there are 
many single regiments whose members, one 
and another, possess full practical knowledge 
of all the arts, sciences, professions, and what- 
ever else, whether useful or elegant, is known 
in the world; and there is scarcely one from 
which there could not be selected a President, 
a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, 
abundantly competent to administer the gov- 
131 



ernment itself. Nor do I say this is not true 
also in the army of our late friends, now ad- 
versaries in this contest ; but if it is, so much 
better the reason why the government which 
has conferred such benefits on both them and 
us should not be broken up. Whoever in any 
section proposes to abandon such a govern- 
ment would do well to consider in deference 
to what principle it is that he does it — what 
better he is likely to get in its stead — whether 
the substitute will give, or be intended to give, 
so much of good to the people? There are 
some foreshadowings on this subject. Our 
adversaries have adopted some declarations 
of independence in which, unlike the good 
old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the 
words "all men are created equal." Why? 
They have adopted a temporary national con- 
stitution, in the preamble of which, unlike 
our good old one, signed by Washington, they 
omit "We, the People," and substitute, "We, 
the deputies of the sovereign and independent 
States." Why? Why this deliberate press- 
ing out of view the rights of men and the 
authority of the people ? 

This is essentially a people's contest. On 
the side of the Union it is a struggle for main- 
taining in the world that form and substance 
of government whose leading object is to 
elevate the condition of men — to lift artifi- 
cial weights from all shoulders; to clear the 
paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all 
an unfettered start and a fair chance in the 

132 



race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary 
departures, from necessity, this is the lead- 
ing object of the government for whose ex- 
istence we contend. 



Our popular government has often been 
called an experiment. Two points in it our 
people have already settled — the successful 
establishing and the successful administering 
of it. One still remains — its successful 
maintenance against a formidable internal 
attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them 
to demonstrate to the world that those who 
can fairly carry an election can also suppress 
a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and 
peaceful successors of bullets; and that when 
ballots have fairly and constitutionally de- 
cided, there can be no successful appeal back 
to bullets; that there can be no successful 
appeal, except to ballots themselves, at suc- 
ceeding elections. Such will be a great lesson 
of peace: teaching men that what they cannot 
take by an election, neither can they take it 
by a war; teaching all the folly of being the 
beginners of a war. 



It was with the deepest regret that the exec- 
utive found the duty of employing the war 
power in defense of the government forced 
upon him. He could but perform this duty 
or surrender the existence of the government. 
No compromise by public servants could, in 
this case, be a cure; not that compromises are 



not often proper, but that no popular govern- 
ment can long survive a marked precedent 
that those who carry an election can only 
save the government from immediate destruc- 
tion by giving up the main point upon which 
the people gave the election. The people 
themselves, and not their servants, can safely 
reverse their own deliberate decisions. 

As a private citizen the executive could not 
have consented that these institutions shall 
perish; much less could he, in betrayal of so 
vast and so sacred a trust as the free people 
have confided to him. He felt that he had no 
moral right to shrink, nor even to count the 
chances of his own life in what might follow. 
In full view of his great responsibility he has, 
so far, done what he has deemed his duty. 
You will now, according to your own judg- 
ment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes 
that your views and your actions may so ac- 
cord with his, as to assure all faithful citizens 
who have been disturbed in their rights of a 
certain and speedy restoration to them, under 
the Constitution and the laws. 

And having thus chosen our course, with- 
out guile and with pure purpose, let us renew 
our trust in God, and go forward without fear 
and with manly hearts. — Message to Congress 
in Special Session; July 4, 1861. 

MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 17th is just 
received ; and coming from you, I con- 
fess it astonishes me. That you should object 
134 



to my adhering to a law which you had as- 
sisted in making and presenting to me less 
than a month before is odd enough. But this 
is a very small part. General Fremont's proc- 
lamation as to confiscation of property and 
the liberation of slaves is purely political and 
not within the range of military law or neces- 
sity. If a commanding general finds a neces- 
sity to seize the farm of a private owner for a 
pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he 
has the right to do so, and to so hold it as 
long as the necessity lasts; and this is within 
military law, because within military neces- 
sity. But to say the farm shall no longer 
belong to the owner, or his heirs forever, and 
this as well when the farm is not needed for 
military purposes as when it is, is purely 
political, without the savor of military law 
about it. And the same is true of slaves. If 
the general needs them, he can seize them and 
use them; but when the need is past, it is not 
for him to fix their permanent future condi- 
tion. That must be settled according to laws 
made by law-makers, and not by military 
proclamations. The proclamation in the 
point in question is simply "dictatorship." 
It assumes that the general may do anything 
he pleases — confiscate the lands and free the 
slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal 
ones. And going the whole figure, I have no 
doubt, would be more popular with some 
thoughtless people than that which has been 
done! But I cannot assume this reckless 

135 



position, nor affow others to assume it on my 
responsibility. 

You speak of it as being the only means of 
saving the government. On the contrary, it 
is itself the surrender of the government. Can 
it be pretended that it is any longer the Gov- 
ernment of the United States — any govern- 
ment of constitution and laws — wherein a 
general or a president may make permanent 
rules of property by proclamation ? I do not 
say Congress might not with propriety pass a 
law on the point, just such as General Fre- 
mont proclaimed. I do not say I might not, 
as a member of Congress, vote for it. What 
I object to is, that I, as President, shall ex- 
pressly or impliedly seize and exercise the 
permanent legislative functions of the gov- 
ernment. — Letter to O. H. Browning; Sep- 
tember 22, 1861. 



MY DEAR SIR: The lady bearer of this 
says she has two sons who want to 
work. Wanting to work is so rare a want 
that it should be encouraged. — Note to Major 
Ramsey; October 17, 1861. 

IT has been said that one bad general is 
better than two good ones; and the say- 
ing is true, if taken to mean no more than that 
an army is better directed by a single mind, 
though inferior, than by two superior ones at 
variance and cross-purposes with each other. 
136 



And the same is true in all joint operations 
wherein those engaged can have none but a 
common end in view, and can differ only as 
to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no 
one on board can wish the ship to sink; and 
yet not infrequently all go down together be- 
cause too many will direct, and no single mind 
can be allowed to control. 

It is not needed nor fitting here that a gen- 
eral argument should be made in favor of 
popular institutions; but there is one point, 
with its connections, not so hackneyed as 
most others, to which I ask a brief attention. 
It is the effort to place capital on an equal 
footing with, if not above, labor, in the struc- 
ture of government. It is assumed that labor 
is available only in connection with capital; 
that nobody labors unless somebody else, own- 
ing capital, somehow by the use of it induces 
him to labor. This assumed, it is next con- 
sidered whether it is best that capital shall hire 
laborers, and thus induce them to work by 
their own consent, or buy them and drive 
them to it without their consent. Having 
proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded 
that all laborers are either hired laborers or 
what we call slaves. And, further, it is as- 
sumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is 
fixed in that condition for life. 

Now, there is no such relation between 
capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any 
such thing as a free man being fixed for life 
137 



in the condition of a hired laborer. Both 
these assumptions are false, and all inferences 
from them are groundless. 

Labor is prior to, and independent of, cap- 
ital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and 
could never have existed if labor had not first 
existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and 
deserves much the higher consideration. Cap- 
ital has its rights, which are as worthy of pro- 
tection as any other rights. Nor is it denied 
that there is, and probably always will be, a 
relation between labor and capital producing 
mutual benefits. The error is in assuming 
that the whole labor of the community exists 
within that relation. A few men own capital, 
and that few avoid labor themselves, and 
with their capital hire or buy another few to 
labor for them. A large majority belong to 
neither class — neither work for others nor 
have others working for them. In most of 
the Southern States a majority of the whole 
people, of all colors, are neither slaves nor 
masters; while in the Northern a large ma- 
jority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with 
their families — wives, sons, and daughters 
— work for themselves, on their farms, in 
their houses, and in their shops, taking the 
whole product to themselves, and asking no 
favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired 
laborers or slaves on the other. It is not for- 
gotten that a considerable number of persons 
mingle their own labor with capital — that 
is, they labor with their own hands and also 
138 



buy or hire others to labor for them ; but this 
is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No 
principle stated is disturbed by the existence 
of this mixed class. 

Again, as has already been said, there is not, 
of necessity, any such thing as the free hired 
laborer being fixed to that condition for life. 
Many independent men everywhere in these 
States, a few years back in their Hves, were 
hired laborers. The prudent, penniless be- 
ginner in the world labors for wages awhile, 
saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land 
for himself, then labors on his own account 
another while, and at length hires another 
new beginner to help him. This is the just 
and generous and prosperous system which 
opens the way to all — gives hope to all, and 
consequent energy and progress and improve- 
ment of condition to all. No men living are 
more worthy to be trusted than those who toil 
up from poverty — none less inclined to take 
or touch aught which they have not honestly 
earned. Let them beware of surrendering a 
political power which they already possess, 
and which, if surrendered, will surely be used 
to close the door of advancement against such 
as they, and to fix new disabilities and bur- 
dens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost. 

From the first taking of our national census 
to the last are seventy years; and we find our 
population at the end of the period eight times 
as great as it was at the beginning. The in- 
crease of those other things which men deem 

139 



desirable has been even greater. We thus 
have, at one view, what the popular principle, 
applied to government, through the machinery 
of the States and the Union, has produced in 
a given time; and also what, if firmly main- 
tained, it promises for the future. There are 
already among us those who, if the Union be 
preserved, will live to see it contain 250,000,000. 
The struggle of to-day is not altogether for 
to-day — it is for a vast future also. With 
a reliance on Providence all the more firm 
and earnest, let us proceed in the great task 
which events have devolved upon us. — An- 
nual Message to Congress; December 3, 1861. 



I HAVE been, and am sincerely your friend; 
and if, as such, I dare to make a sugges- 
tion, I would say you are adopting the best 
possible way to ruin yourself. "Act well 
your part, there all the honor lies." He who 
does something at the head of one Regiment, 
will eclipse him who does nothing at the head 
of a hundred. 

Your friend, as ever, 

A. Lincoln. 
— Letter to Major-General David Hunter ; 
December 31, 1861.^ 

* On the outside of the envelope in which this letter 
was found. General Hunter had written : 

" The President's reply to my *• ugly letter.' This lay 
on his table a month after it was written, and when 
finally sent was by a special conveyance, with the direc- 
tion that it was only to be given to me when 1 was in a 
good humor." 

140 



CAN you, for your States, do better than 
to take the course [compensated eman- 
cipation] I urge? Discarding punctilio and 
maxims adapted to more manageable times, 
and looking only to the unprecedentcdly stern 
facts of our case, can you do better in any 
possible event ? You prefer that the constitu- 
tional relation of the States to the nation shall 
be practically restored without disturbance 
of that institution; and if this were done, my 
whole duty in this respect, under the Consti- 
tution and my oath of office, would be per- 
formed. But it is not done, and we are try- 
ing to accomplish it by war. The incidents 
of the war cannot be avoided. If the war 
continues long, as it must if the object be not 
sooner attained, the institution in your States 
will be extinguished by mere friction and 
abrasion — by the mere incidents of the war. 
It will be gone, and you will have nothing 
valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is 
gone already. How much better for you and 
for your people to take the step which at once 
shortens the war and secures substantial com- 
pensation for that which is sure to be wholly 
lost in any other event ! How much better 
to thus save the money which else we sink 
forever in the war! How much better to do 
it while we can, lest the war erelong render 
us pecuniarily unable to do it ! How much 
better for you as seller, and the nation as 
buyer, to sell out and buy out that without 
which the war could never have been, than 
141 



to sink both the thing to be sold and the price 
of it in cutting one another's throats? I do 
not speak of emancipation at once, but of a 
decision at once to emancipate gradually. 
Room in South America for colonization can 
be obtained cheaply and in abundance, and 
when numbers shall be large enough to be 
company and encouragement for one another, 
the freed people will not be so reluctant to go. 
— Appeal to Border State Representatives; 
July 12, 1862. 



YOUR race is suffering, in my judgment, 
the greatest wrong inflicted on any 
people. But even when you cease to be slaves, 
you are yet far removed from being placed 
on an equality with the white race. You are 
cut off from many of the advantages which 
the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men 
is to enjoy equality with the best when free, 
but on this broad continent not a single man 
of your race is made the equal of a single man 
of ours. Go where you are treated the best, 
and the ban is still upon you. . . . But for 
your race among us there could not be war, 
although many men engaged on either side 
do not care for you one way or the other. . . . 
It is better for us both, therefore, to be sepa- 
rated. I know that there are free men among 
you who, even if they could better their con- 
dition, are not as much inclined to go out of 
the country as those who, being slaves, could 
142 



obtain their freedom on this condition. I 
suppose one of the principal difficulties in the 
way of colonization is that the free colored 
man cannot see that his comfort would be 
advanced by it. . . . This is (I speak in no 
unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of 
the case. You ought to do something to help 
those who are not so fortunate as yourselves. 
There is an unwillingness on the part of our 
people, harsh as it may be, for you free col- 
ored people to remain with us. Now, if you 
could give a start to the white people, you 
would open a wide door for many to be made 
free. If we deal with those who are not free 
at the beginning, and whose intellects are 
clouded by slavery, we have very poor ma- 
terial to start with. If intelligent colored 
men, such as are before me, would move in 
this matter, much might be accomplished. 
It is exceedingly important that we have men 
at the beginning capable of thinking as 
white men, and not those who have been 
systematically oppressed. There is much to 
encourage you. For the sake of your race 
you should sacrifice something of your 
present comfort for the purpose of being 
as grand in that respect as the white people. 
It is a cheering thought throughout life, that 
something can be done to ameliorate the 
condition of those who have been subject to 
the hard usages of the world. It is difficult 
to make a man miserable while he feels he 
is worthy of himself and claims kindred to 

143 



the great God who made him. — Address 
to a Deputation of Colored Men; August 14, 
1862. 



DEAR SIR: I have just read yours of the 
19th, addressed to myself through the 
New York Tribune. If there be in it any 
statements or assumptions of fact which I 
may know to be erroneous, I do not, now 
and here, controvert them. If there be in it 
any inferences which I may believe to be 
falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue 
against them. If there be perceptible in it 
an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it 
in deference to an old friend whose heart I 
have always supposed to be right. 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," 
as you say, I have not meant to leave any one 
in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it 
the shortest way under the Constitution. The 
sooner the national authority can be restored, 
the nearer the Union will be "the Union as 
it was." If there be those who would not 
save the Union unless they could at the same 
time save slavery, I do not agree with them. 
If there be those who would not save the 
Union unless they could at the same time 
destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. 
My paramount object in this struggle is to 
save the Union, and is not either to save or 
to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union 
144 



without freeing any slave, I would do it; and 
if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I 
would do it; and if I could save it by freeing 
some and leaving others alone, I would also 
do that. What I do about slavery and the 
colored race, I do because I believe it helps 
to save the Union ; and what I forbear, I for- 
bear because I do not believe it would help 
to save the Union. I shall do less whenever 
I shall believe what I. am doing hurts the 
cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall 
believe doing more will help the cause. I 
shall try to correct errors when shown to be 
errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as 
they shall appear to be true views. 

I have here stated my purpose according 
to my view of official duty; and I intend no 
modification of my oft-expressed personal 
wish that all men everywhere could be free. — ■ 
Letter to Horace Greeley; August 22, 1862. 



THE subject presented in the memorial 
is one upon which I have thought much 
for weeks past, and I may even say for months. 
I am approached with the most opposite 
opinions and advice, and that by religious 
men who are equally certain that they repre- 
sent the divine will. I am sure that either the 
one or the other class is mistaken in that be- 
lief, and perhaps in some respects both. I 
hope it will not be irreverent for me to say 
that if it is probable that God would reveal 
10 145 



his will to others on a point so connected with 
my duty, it might be supposed he would re- 
veal it directly to me; for, unless I am more 
deceived in myself than I often am, it is my 
earnest desire to know the will of Providence 
in this matter. And if I can learn what it is, 
I will do it. These are not, however, the days 
of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted 
that I am not to expect a direct revelation. 
I must study the plain physical facts of the 
case, ascertain what is possible, and learn 
what appears to be wise and right. 

The subject is difficult, and good men do 
not agree. . . . You know that the last ses- 
sion of Congress had a decided majority of 
antislavery men, yet they could not unite on 
this policy. And the same is true of the re- 
ligious people. Why, the rebel soldiers are 
praying with a great deal more earnestness, 
I fear, than our own troops, and expecting 

God to favor their side. . . . 

What good would a proclamation of eman- 
cipation from me do, especially as we are now 
situated ? I do not want to issue a document 
that the whole world will see must necessarily 
be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against 
the comet. Would my word free the slaves, 
when I cannot even enforce the Constitution 
in the rebel States? Is there a single court, 
or magistrate, or individual that would be 
influenced by it there? And what reason is 
there to think it would have any greater effect 
upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, 
146 



which I approved, and which offers protec- 
tion and freedom to the slaves of rebel mas- 
ters who come within our lines ? Yet I cannot 
learn that that law has caused a single slave 
to come over to us. And suppose they could 
be induced by a proclamation of freedom 
from me to throw themselves upon us, what 
should we do with them? How can we feed 
and care for such a multitude? . . . 

Now, then, tell me, if you please, what pos- 
sible result of good would follow the issuing 
of such a proclamation as you desire? Un- 
derstand, I raise no objections against it 
on legal or constitutional grounds; for, as 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in 
time of war I suppose I have a right to take 
any measure which may best subdue the 
enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral 
nature, in view of possible consequences of 
insurrection and massacre at the South. I 
view this matter as a practical war measure, 
to be decided on according to the advantages 
or disadvantages it may offer to the suppres- 
sion of the rebellion. 

I admit that slavery is the root of the rebel- 
lion, or at least its sine qua non. The ambi- 
tion of politicians may have instigated them 
to act, but they would have been impotent 
without slavery as their instrument. I will 
also concede that emancipation would help 
us in Europe, and convince them that we are 
incited by something more than ambition. 
I grant, further, that it would help somewhat 

147 



at the North, though not so much, I fear, as 
you and those you represent imagine. Still, 
some additional strength would be added in 
that way to the war, and then, unquestionably, 
it would weaken the rebels by drawing ofif 
their laborers, which is of great importance; 
but I am not so sure we could do much with 
the blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear 
that in a few weeks the arms would be in the 
hands of the rebels; and, indeed, thus far 
we have not had arms enough to equip our 
white troops. I will mention another thing, 
though it meet only your scorn and contempt. 
There are fifty thousand bayonets in the 
Union armies from the border slave States. 
It would be a serious matter if, in conse- 
quence of a proclamation such as you desire, 
they should go over to the rebels. I do not 
think they all would — not so many, indeed, 
as a year ago, or as six months ago — not so 
many to-day as yesterday. Every day in- 
creases their Union feeling. They are also 
getting their pride enlisted, and want to beat 
the rebels. Let me say one thing more: I 
think you should admit that we already have 
an important principle to rally and unite the 
people, in the fact that constitutional gov- 
ernment is at stake. This is a fundamental 
idea going down about as deep as anything. 

Do not misunderstand me because I have 

mentioned these objections. They indicate 

the difficulties that have thus far prevented 

my action in some such way as you desire. I 

148 



have not decided against a proclamation of 
liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter 
under advisement ; and I can assure you that 
the subject is on my mind, by day and night, 
more than any other. Whatever shall ap- 
pear to be God's will, I will do. — Remarks 
to Representatives of Chicago Churches; Sep- 
tember 13, 1862. 



ON the first day of January, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within 
any State or designated part of a State the 
people whereof shall then be in rebellion 
against the United States, shall be then, 
thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Ex- 
ecutive Government of the United States, 
including the military and naval authority 
thereof, will recognize and maintain the free- 
dom of such persons, and will do no act or 
acts to repress such persons, or any of them, 
in any efforts they may make for their actual 
freedom. — Preliminary Emancipation Proc- 
lamation; September 22, 1862. 

IN the very responsible position in which I 
happen to be placed, being a humble in- 
strument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, 
as I am, and as we all are, to work out his 
great purposes, I have desired that all my 
works and acts may be according to his will, 
149 



and that it might be so, I have sought his 
aid; but if, after endeavoring to do my best 
in the Hght which he affords me, I find my 
efforts fail, I must beheve that for some pur- 
pose unknown to me, he wills it otherwise. 
If I had had my way, this war would never 
have been commenced. If I had been al- 
lowed my way, this war would have been 
ended before this; but we find it still con- 
tinues, and we must believe that he permits 
it for some wise purpose of his own, mysteri- 
ous and unknown to us; and though with 
our limited understandings we may not be 
able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but 
believe that he who made the world still 
governs it. — Reply to an Address by Mrs. 
Gurney; September 28, 1862. 



THE will of God prevails. In great con- 
tests each party claims to act in accord- 
ance with the will of God. Both may be, and 
one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and 
against the same thing at the same time. In 
the present civil war it is quite possible that 
God's purpose is something different from 
the purpose of either party; and yet the 
human instrumentalities, working just as they 
do, are of the best adaptation to effect his 
purpose. I am almost ready to say that this 
is probably true; that God wills this contest, 
and wills that it shall not end yet. By his 
mere great power on the minds of the now 

150 



contestants, he could have either saved or 
destroyed the Union without a human con- 
test. Yet the contest began. And, having 
begun, he could give the final victory to either 
side any day. Yet the contest proceeds. — 
Meditation on the Divine Will; September 30, 
1862. 



A NATION may be said to consist of its 
territory, its people, and its laws. The 
territory is the only part which is of certain 
durability. "One generation passeth away, 
and another generation cometh, but the earth 
abideth forever." It is of the first impor- 
tance to duly consider and estimate this ever- 
enduring part. That portion of the earth's 
surface which is owned and inhabited by the 
people of the United States is well adapted 
to be the home of one national family, and 
it is not well adapted for two or more. Its 
vast extent and its variety of climate and pro- 
ductions are of advantage in this age for one 
people, whatever they might have been in 
former ages. Steam, telegraphs, and intelli- 
gence have brought these to be an advanta- 
geous combination for one united people. . . . 
Our national strife springs not from our 
permanent part, not from the land we in- 
habit, not from our national homestead. 
There is no possible severing of this but 
would multiply, and not mitigate, evils among 
us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it 

151 



demands union and abhors separation. In 
fact, it would erelong force reunion, however 
much of blood and treasure the separation 
might have cost. 

Our strife pertains to ourselves — to the 
passing generations of men ; and it can with- 
out convulsion be hushed forever with the 
passing of one generation. 

In this view I recommend the adoption of 
the following resolution and articles amenda- 
tory to the Constitution of the United States 
[and providing for compensated emanci- 
pation]. 

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. 
We of this Congress and this administration 
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No 
personal significance or insignificance can 
spare one or another of us. The fiery trial 
through which we pass will light us down, in 
honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. 
We say we are for the Union. The world will 
not forget that we say this. We know how 
to save the Union. The world knows we do 
know how to save it. We — even we here — 
hold the power and bear the responsibility. 
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure free- 
dom to the free — honorable alike in what 
we give and what we preserve. We shall 
nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope 
of earth. Other means may succeed; this 
could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, 
generous, just — a way which, if followed, 
152 



the world will forever applaud, and God must 
forever bless. — Annual Message to Congress; 
December i, 1862. 

DEAR FANNY: It is with deep regret 
that I learn of the death of your kind 
and brave father, and especially that it isaffect- 
ing your young heart beyond what is common 
in such cases. In this sad world of ours sorrow 
comes to all, and to the young it comes with 
bitterer agony because it takes them una- 
wares. The older have learned ever to expect 
it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation 
to your present distress. Perfect relief is not 
possible, except with time. You cannot now 
realize that you will ever feel better. Is not 
this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are 
sure to be happy again. To know this, which 
is certainly true, will make you some less 
miserable now. I have had experience enough 
to know what I say, and you need only to 
believe it to feel better at once. The mem- 
ory of your dear father, instead of an agony, 
will yet be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart 
of a purer and holier sort than you have 
known before. 

Please present my kind regards to your 
afflicted mother. — Letter to Miss Fanny 
McCuUough; December 23, 1862. 

THE division of a State is dreaded as a 
precedent. But a measure made ex- 
pedient by a war is no precedent for times of 

153 



peace. Il is said that the admission of West 
Virginia is secession, and tolerated only be- 
cause it is our secession. Well, if we call it 
by that name, there is still difference enough 
between secession against the Constitution 
and secession in favor of the Constitution. I 
believe the admission of West Virginia into 
the Union is expedient. — Opinion on Ad- 
mission of West Virginia into the Union; 
December 31, 1862. 

THAT Congress has power to regulate the 
currency of the country can hardly 
admit of a doubt, and that a judicious meas- 
ure to prevent the deterioration of this cur- 
rency by a reasonable taxation of bank circu- 
lation or otherwise is needed, seems equally 
clear. Independently of this general consider- 
ation, it would be unjust to the people at 
large to exempt banks enjoying the special 
privilege of circulation from their just pro- 
portion of the public burdens. — Message to 
Congress on Issue of United States Notes; 
January 17, 1863. 

I KNOW and deeply deplore the sufiferings 
which the working-men at Manchester, 
and in all Europe, are called to endure in 
this crisis. It has been often and studiously 
represented that the attempt to overthrow 
this government, which was built upon the 
foundation of human rights, and to substitute 



for it one which should rest exclusively on the 
basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain 
the favor of Europe. Through the action of 
our disloyal citizens, the working-men of 
Europe have been subjected to severe trials, 
for the purpose of forcing their sanction to 
that attempt. Under the circumstances, I 
cannot but regard your decisive utterances 
upon the question as an instance of sublime 
Christian heroism which has not been sur- 
passed in any age or in any country. It is 
indeed an energetic and reinspiring assurance 
of the inherent power of truth, and of the 
ultimate and universal triumph of justice, 
humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that 
the sentiments you have expressed will be 
sustained by your great nation; and, on the 
other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring 
you that they will excite admiration, esteem, 
and the most reciprocal feelings of friend- 
ship among the American people. I hail this 
interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an 
augury that whatever else may happen, what- 
ever misfortune may befall your country or 
my own, the peace and friendship which now 
exist between the two nations will be, as it 
shall be my desire to make them, perpetual. 
— Letter to the Workingmen of Manchester, 
England; January 19, 1863. 

GENERAL : I have placed you at the head 
of the Army of the Potomac. Of course 
I have done this upon what appear to me to 



be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best 
for you to know that there are some things in 
regard to which I am not quite satisfied with 
you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful 
soldier, which of course I like. I also believe 
you do not mix politics with your profession, 
in which you are right. You have confidence 
in yourself, which is a valuable if not an 
indispensable quality. You are ambitious, 
which, within reasonable bounds, does good 
rather than harm; but I think that during 
General Burnside's command of the army 
you have taken counsel of your ambition and 
thwarted him as much as you could, in which 
you did a great wrong to the country and to a 
most meritorious and honorable brother offi- 
cer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe 
it, of your recently saying that both the army 
and the government needed a dictator. Of 
course it was not for this, but in spite of it, 
that I have given you the command. Only 
those generals who gain successes can set up 
dictators. What I now ask of you is military 
success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The 
government will support you to the utmost 
of its ability, which is neither more nor less 
than it has done and will do for all command- 
ers. I much fear that the spirit which you 
have aided to infuse into the army, of criti- 
cising their commander and withholding con- 
fidence from him, will now turn upon you. 
I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. 
Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive 
156 



again, could get any good out of an army 
while such a spirit prevails in it; and now 
beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but 
with energy and sleepless vigilance go for- 
ward and give us victories. — Letter to Major- 
General Joseph Hooker ; January 26, 1863. 

MY DEAR SIR: Your note, by which 
you, as general superintendent of the 
United States Christian Commission, invite 
me to preside at a meeting to be held this day 
at the hall of the House of Representatives 
in this city, is received. 

While, for reasons which I deem sufficient, 
I must decline to preside, I cannot withhold 
my approval of the meeting and its worthy 
objects. Whatever shall be sincerely, and in 
God's name, devised for the good of the 
soldier and seaman in their hard spheres of 
duty, can scarcely fail to be blest. And what- 
ever shall tend to turn our thoughts from the 
unreasoning and uncharitable passions, preju- 
dices, and jealousies incident to a great na- 
tional trouble such as ours, and to fix them 
upon the vast and long-enduring conse- 
quences, for weal or for woe, which are to 
result from the struggle, and especially to 
strengthen our reliance on the Supreme Be- 
ing for the final triumph of the right, cannot 
but be well for us all. 

The birthday of Washington and the 
Christian Sabbath coinciding this year, and 
suggesting together the highest interests of 

157 



this life and of that to come, is most propi- 
tious for the meeting proposed. — Letter to 
Alexander Reed; February 22, 1863. 

TRUTH to speak, I do not appreciate this 
matter of rank on paper as you officers 
do. The world will not forget that you fought 
the battle of Stone River, and it will never care 
a fig whether you rank General Grant on 
paper, or he so ranks you. — Letter to Major- 
Genet al Rosecrans; March 17, 1863. 

I AM told you have at least thought of rais- 
ing a negro military force. In my opinion 
the country now needs no specific thing so 
much as some man of your ability and posi- 
tion to go to this work. When I speak of 
your position, I mean that of an eminent 
citizen of a slave State and himself a slave- 
holder. The colored population is the great 
available and yet unavailed of force for re- 
storing the Union. The bare sight of fifty 
thousand armed and drilled black soldiers 
upon the banks of the Mississippi would end 
the rebellion at once; and who doubts that 
we can present that sight if we but take hold 
in earnest? — Letter to Governor Andrew 
Johnson, of Tennessee; March 26, 1863. 

WHEREAS, it is the duty of nations as 
well as of men to own their depen- 
dence upon the overruling power of God ; to 
confess their sins and transgressions in humble 

158 



sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine 
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; 
and to recognize the sublime truth, announced 
in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all 
history, that those nations only are blessed 
whose God is the Lord: 

And insomuch as we know that by his 
divine law nations, like individuals, are sub- 
jected to punishments and chastisements in 
this world, may we not justly fear that the 
awful calamity of civil war which now deso- 
lates the land may be but a punishment in- 
flicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to 
the needful end of our national reformation 
as a whole people ? We have been the recipi- 
ents of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We 
have been preserved, these many years, in 
peace and prosperity. We have grown in 
numbers, weaUh, and power as no other na- 
tion has ever grown; but we have forgotten 
God. We have forgotten the gracious hand 
which preserved us in peace, and multiplied 
and enriched and strengthened us; and we 
have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of 
our hearts, that all these blessings were pro- 
duced by some superior wisdom and virtue 
of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken suc- 
cess, we have become too self-sufficient to feel 
the necessity of redeeming and preserving 
grace, too proud to pray to the God that made 
us: 

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves 
before the offended Power, to confess our 



national sins, and to pray for clemency and 
forgiveness. — Proclamation of April 30, 
1863, as a National Fast Day; March 30, 
1863. 

I UNDERSTAND the meeting whose reso- 
lutions I am considering to be in favor of 
suppressing the rebellion by military force — 
by armies. Long experience has shown that 
armies cannot be maintained unless desertion 
shall be punished by the severe penalty of 
death. The case requires, and the law and 
the Constitution sanction, this punishment. 
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy 
who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of 
a wily agitator who induces him to desert? 
This is none the less injurious when effected 
by getting a father, or brother, or friend into 
a public meeting, and there working upon his 
feelings till he is persuaded to write the sol- 
dier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, 
for a wicked administration of a contemptible 
government, too weak to arrest and punish 
him if he shall desert. I think that, in such 
a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy 
is not only constitutional, but withal a great 
mercy. — Letter to Erastus Corning and 
Others; June 12, 1863. 

YOU claim that men may, if they choose, 
embarrass those whose duty it is to com- 
bat a giant rebellion, and then be dealt with 
in turn, only as if there were no rebellion. 
160 



The Constitution itself rejects this view. The 
military arrests and detentions which have 
been made, including those of Mr. Vallandig- 
ham, which are not different in principle from 
the others, have been for prevention, and 
not for punishment — as injunctions to stay 
injury, as proceedings to keep the peace; 
and hence, like proceedings in such cases and 
for like reasons, they have not been accom- 
panied with indictments, or trials by juries, 
nor in a single case by any punishment what- 
ever, beyond what is purely incidental to the 
prevention. The original sentence of im- 
prisonment in Mr. Vallandigham's case was 
to prevent injury to the military service only, 
and the modification of it was made as a less 
disagreeable mode to him of securing the 
same prevention. . . . 

We all know that combinations, armed in 
some instances, to resist the arrest of deserters 
began several months ago; that more recently 
the like has appeared in resistance to the en- 
rolment preparatory to a draft; and that 
quite a number of assassinations have oc- 
curred from the same animus. These had to 
be met by military force, and this again has 
led to bloodshed and death. And now, under 
a sense of responsibility more weighty and 
enduring than any which is merely official, 
I solemnly declare my belief that this hin- 
drance of the military, including maiming and 
murder, is due to the course in which Mr. 
\'allandigham has been engaged in a greater 
II i6i 



degree than to any other cause; and it is due 
to him personally in a greater degree than to 
any other one man. . . . 

With all this before their eyes, the conven- 
tion you represent have nominated Mr. Val- 
landigham for governor of Ohio, and both 
they and you have declared the purpose to 
sustain the National Union by all constitu- 
tional means. But of course they and you in 
common reserve to yourselves to decide what 
are constitutional means; and, unlike the 
Albany meeting, you omit to state or intimate 
that in your opinion an army is a constitu- 
tional means of saving the Union against a 
rebellion, or even to intimate that you are 
conscious of an existing rebellion being in 
progress with the avowed object of destroy- 
ing that very Union. At the same time your 
nominee for governor, in whose behalf you 
appeal, is known to you and to the world to 
declare against the use of an army to suppress 
the rebellion. Your own attitude, therefore, 
encourages desertion, resistance to the draft, 
and the like, because it teaches those who 
incline to desert and to escape the draft to 
believe it is your purpose to protect them, and 
to hope that you will become strong enough 
to do so. . . . 

I send you duplicates of this letter in order 
that you, or a majority of you, may, if you 
choose, indorse your names upon one of them 
and return it thus indorsed to me with the 
understanding that those signing are thereby 
162 



committed to the following propositions and 
to nothing else: 

1. That there is now a rebellion in the 
United States, the object and tendency of 
which is to destroy the National Union; and 
that, in your opinion, an army and navy are 
constitutional means for suppressing that 
rebellion; 

2. That no one of you will do anything 
which, in his own judgment, will tend to 
hinder the increase, or favor the decrease, or 
lessen the efficiency of the army or navy while 
engaged in the effort to suppress that rebel- 
lion; and 

3. That each of you will, in his sphere, do 
all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and 
seamen of the army and navy, while engaged 
in the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, 
fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for and 
supported. 

And with the further understanding that 
upon receiving the letter and names thus in- 
dorsed, I will cause them to be published, 
which publication shall be, within itself, a 
revocation of the order in relation to Mr. Val- 
landigham. — Letter to Committee of Ohio 
Democrats; June 29, 1863. 



WE are contending with an enemy, who, 
as I understand, drives every able- 
bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very 
much as a butcher drives bullocks into a 
163 



slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argu- 
ment is used. This produces an army which 
will soon turn upon our now victorious sol- 
diers, already in the field, if they shall not be 
sustained by recruits as they should be. It 
produces an army with a rapidity not to be 
matched by our side, if we first waste time to 
reexperiment with the volunteer system al- 
ready deemed by Congress, and palpably, in 
fact, so far exhausted as to be, inadequate, 
and then more time to obtain a court decision 
as to whether a law is constitutional which 
requires a part of those now not in the service 
to go to the aid of those who are already in 
it, and still more time to determine with abso- 
lute certainty that we get those who are to 
go in the precisely legal proportion to those 
who are not to go. My purpose is to be in 
my action just and constitutional, and yet 
practical, in performing the important duty 
with which I am charged, of maintaining the 
unity and the free principles of our common 
country. — Letter to Governor Horatio Sey- 
mour^ of New York; August 7, 1863. 



r O OME of] you say you will not fight to free 
LO negroes. Some of them seem willing to 
fight for you ; but no matter. Fight you, then, 
exclusively to save the Union. I issued the 
proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving 
the Union. Whenever you shall have con- 
quered all resistance to the Union, if I shall 
164 



urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt 
time then for you to declare you will not fight 
to free negroes. 

I thought that in your struggle for the 
Union, to whatever extent the negroes should 
cease helping the enemy, to that extent it 
weakened the enemy in its resistance to you. 
Do you think differently? I thought that 
whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, 
leaves just so much less for white soldiers to 
do in saving the Union. Does it appear other- 
wise to you? But negroes, like other people, 
act upon motives. Why should they do any- 
thing for us if we will do nothing for them? 
If they stake their lives for us they must be 
prompted by the strongest motive, even the 
promise of freedom. And the promise, be- 
ing made, must be kept. 

The signs look better. The Father of 
Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks 
to the great Northwest for it. Nor yet wholly 
to them. Three hundred miles up they met 
New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, 
hewing their way right and left. The sunny 
South, too, in more colors than one, also lent 
a hand. On the spot, their part of the history 
was jotted down in black and white. The 
job was a great national one, and let none be 
banned who bore an honorable part in it. 
And while those who have cleared the great 
river may well be proud, even that is not all. 
It is hard to say that anything has been more 
bravely and well done than at Antietam, 
i6s 



Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many 
fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's 
web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery 
margins they have been present. Not only 
on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid 
river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, 
and wherever the ground was a little damp, 
they have been and made their tracks. Thanks 
to all : for the great republic — for the prin- 
ciple it lives by and keeps alive — for man's 
vast future — thanks to all. 

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. 
I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, 
and so come as to be worth the keeping in all 
future time. It will then have been proved 
that among free men there can be no success- 
ful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and 
that they who take such appeal are sure to 
lose their case and pay the cost. And then 
there will be some black men who can remem- 
ber that with silent tongue, and clenched 
teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet 
they have helped mankind on to this great 
consummation, while I fear there will be 
some white ones unable to forget that with 
malignant heart and deceitful speech they 
strove to hinder it. — Letter to James C. 
Conkling to he read at Union meeting in 
Springfield, III.; August 26, 1863. 

FOURSCORE and seven years ago our 
fathers brought forth on this continent 
a new nation, conceived in Hberty, and dedi- 
166 



cated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
We are met on a great battle-field of that war. 
We have come to dedicate a portion of that 
field as a final resting-place for those who 
here gave their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 
we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate 

— we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow 

— this ground. The brave men, living and 
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 
it far above our poor power to add or detract. 
The world will little note nor long remember 
what we say here, but it can never forget what 
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, 
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work 
which they who fought here have thus far so 
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
dedicated to the great task remaining before 
us — that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which 
they gave the last full measure of devotion; 
that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; 
and that government of the people, by the 
people, for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth. — Dedication of the National Ceme- 
tery at Gettysburg, Pa.; November 19, 1863. 

167 



THE strongest bond of human sympathy, 
outside of the family relation, should 
be one uniting all working people, of all na- 
tions, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should 
this lead to a war upon property, or the own- 
ers of property. Property is the fruit of labor; 
property is desirable; is a positive good in 
the world. That some should be rich shows 
that others may become rich, and hence is 
just encouragement to industry and enter- 
prise. Let not him who is houseless pull 
down the house of another, but let him work 
diligently and build one for himself, thus by 
example assuring that his own shall be safe 
from violence when built. — Remarks to a 
Committee of New York Workingmen; March 
24, 1864. 



THE world has never had a good defini- 
tion of the word liberty, and the Ameri- 
can people, just now, are much in want of one. 
We all declare for liberty; but in using the 
same word we do not all mean the same thing. 
With some the word liberty may mean for 
each man to do as he pleases with himself, 
and the product of his labor; while with 
others the same word may mean for some 
men to do as they please with other men, and 
the product of other men's labor. Here are 
two, not only different, but incompatible 
things, called by the same name, liberty. And 
it follows that each of the things is, by the 
16S 



respective parties, called by two different and 
incompatible names — liberty and tyranny. 

The shepherd drives the wolf from the 
sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks 
the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf 
denounces him for the same act, as the de- 
stroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was 
a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf 
are not agreed upon a definition of the word 
liberty; and precisely the same difference 
prevails to-day among us human creatures, 
even in the North, and all professing to love 
liberty. Hence we behold the process by 
which thousands are daily passing from under 
the yoke of bondage hailed by some as the 
advance of liberty, and bewailed by others 
as the destruction of all liberty. — Remarks 
at a Sanitary Fair in Baltimore; April i8, 
1864. 



IN response to the preamble and resolu- 
tions of the American Baptist Home Mis- 
sion Society, which you did me the honor to 
present, I can only thank you for thus adding 
to the effective and almost unanimous support 
which the Christian communities are so zeal- 
ously giving to the country and to liberty. 
Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how it could 
be otherwise with any one professing Christi- 
anity, or even having ordinary perceptions of 
right and wrong. To read in the Bible, as 
the word of God himself, that "In the sweat 
169 



of thy face shalt thou eat bread," and to 
preach therefrom that, "In the sweat of other 
men's faces shalt thou eat bread," to my mind 
can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincer- 
ity. When brought to my final reckoning, 
may I have to answer for robbing no man of 
his goods; yet more tolerable even this, than 
for robbing one of himself and all that was 
his. When, a year or two ago, those pro- 
fessedly holy men of the South met in the 
semblance of prayer and devotion, and, in 
the name of him who said, "As ye would all 
men should do unto you, do ye even so unto 
them," appealed to the Christian world to aid 
them in doing to a whole race of men as they 
would have no man do unto themselves, to my 
thinking they contemned and insulted God 
and his church far more than did Satan when 
he tempted the Saviour with the kingdoms of 
the earth. The devil's attempt was no more 
false, and far less hypocritical. But let me 
forbear, remembering it is also written, 
"Judge not lest ye be judged." — Letter to 
Committee of Baptists ; May t,o, 1864. 

I AM always for the man who wishes to 
work. — Endorsement of Application for 
Employment; August 15, 1864. 

THERE may be some inequalities in the 
practical application of our system. It 
is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact 
proportion to the value of his property; but 
170 



if we should wait, before collecting a tax, 
to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact 
proportion with every other man, we should 
never collect any tax at all. There may be 
mistakes made sometimes; things may be 
done wrong, while the officers of the govern- 
ment do all they can to prevent mistakes. 
But I beg of you, as citizens of this great re- 
public, not to let your minds be carried off 
from the great work we have before us. This 
struggle is too large for you to be diverted 
from it by any small matter. When you re- 
turn to your homes, rise up to the height of 
a generation of men worthy of a free govern- 
ment, and we will carry out the great work 
we have commenced. — Remarks to the 
164th Ohio Regiment; August 18, 1864. 

IN regard to this great book, I have but to 
say, it is the best gift God has given to 
man. All the good Saviour gave to the world 
was communicated through this book. But 
for it we could not know right from wrong. 
All things most desirable for man's welfare, 
here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed 
in it. To you I return my most sincere thanks 
for the very elegant copy of the great Book of 
God which you present. — Remarks to a 
Negro Delegation; September 7, 1864, 

WE cannot have free government without 
elections; and if the rebellion could 
force us to forego or postpone a national elec- 
171 



tion, it might fairly claim to have already 
conquered and ruined us. The strife of the 
election is but human nature practically ap- 
plied to the facts of the case. What has oc- 
curred in this case must ever recur in similar 
cases. Human nature w^ill not change. In 
any future great national trial, compared 
with the men of this, we shall have as weak 
and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and 
as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents 
of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, 
and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. 
But the election, along with its incidental 
and undesirable strife, has done good too. 
It has demonstrated that a people's govern- 
ment can sustain a national election in the 
midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has 
not been known to the world that this was a 
possibility. It shows, also, how sound and 
how strong we still are. It shows that, even 
among candidates of the same party, he who 
is most devoted to the Union and most op- 
posed to treason can receive most of the 
people's votes. It shows, also, to the extent 
yet known, that we have more men now than 
we had when the war began. Gold is good 
in its place, but living, brave, patriotic men 
are better than gold. 

But the rebellion continues, and now that 
the election is over, may not all having a com- 
mon interest reunite in a common effort to 
save our common country? For my own 
part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid 
172 



placing any obstacle in the way. So long as 
I have been here I have not willingly planted 
a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am 
deeply sensible to the high compliment of a 
reelection, and duly grateful, as I trust, to 
almighty God for having directed my country- 
men to a right conclusion, as I think, for their 
own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction 
that any other man may be disappointed or 
pained by the result. 

May I ask those who have not differed with 
me to join with me in this same spirit toward 
those who have ? — Remarks in Response to a 
Serenade; November lo, 1864. 

DEAR MADAM, — I have been shown in 
the files of the War Department a state- 
ment of the Adjutant-General of Massachu- 
setts that you are the mother of five sons who 
have died gloriously on the field of battle. I 
feel how weak and fruitless must be any words 
of mine which should attempt to beguile you 
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But 
I cannot refrain from tendering to you the 
consolation that may be found in the thanks 
of the Republic they died to save. I pray that 
our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish 
of your bereavement, and leave you only the 
cherished memory of the loved and lost, and 
the solemn pride that must be yours to have 
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of free- 
dom. — Letter to Mrs. Bixby; November 21, 
1864. 

173 



IT seems that there is now no organized 
military Torce of the enemy in Missouri, 
and yet that destruction of property and life 
is rampant everywhere. Is not the cure for 
this within easy reach of the people them- 
selves? It cannot but be that every man not 
naturally a robber or cut-throat would gladly 
put an end to this state of things. A large 
majority in every locality must feel alike upon 
this subject ; and if so, they only need to reach 
an understanding, one with another. Each 
lerving all others alone solves the problem; 
and surely each would do this but for his ap- 
prehension that others will not leave him 
alone. Cannot this mischievous distrust be 
removed? Let neighborhood meetings be 
everywhere called and held, of all entertain- 
ing a sincere purpose for mutual security in 
the future, whatever they may heretofore have 
thought, said or done about the war, or about 
anything else. Let all such meet, and, waiv- 
ing all else, pledge each to cease harassing 
others, and to make common cause against 
whoever persists in making, aiding, or en- 
couraging further disturbance. The practical 
means they will best know how to adopt and 
apply. At such meetings old friendships will 
cross the memory, and honor and Christian 
charity will come in to help. — Letter to Gov- 
ernor Thomas C. Fletcher; February 20, 
1865. 



174 



NEITHER party expected for the war the 
magnitude or the duration which it 
has already attained. Neither anticipated 
that the cause of the conflict might cease Avith, 
or even before, the conflict itself should cease. 
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a re- 
sult less fundamental and astounding. Both 
read the same Bible, and pray to the same 
God; and each invokes his aid against the 
other. It may seem strange that any men 
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other 
men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be 
not judged. The prayers of both could not 
be answered — that of neither has been 
answered fully. 

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe 
unto the world because of ofi'enses! for it 
must needs be that offenses come; but woe 
to that man by whom the offense cometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of those offenses which, in the provi- 
dence of God, must needs come, but which, 
having continued through his appointed time, 
he now wills to remove, and that he gives to 
both North and South this terrible war, as 
the woe due to those by whom the offense 
came, shall we discern therein any departure 
from those divine attributes which the be- 
lievers in a living God always ascribe to him? 
Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — 
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 

175 



until all the wealth piled by the bond- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn with the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still it must be 
said, "The judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none; with charity for 
all; with firmness in the right, as God gives 
us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
work we are in; to bind up the nation's 
wounds; to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his 
orphan — to do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
selves, and with all nations. — Second In- 
augural Address; March 4, 1865. 



EVERY one likes a compliment. Thank 
you for yours on my little notification 
speech and on the recent inaugural address, 
I expect the latter to wear as well as — per- 
haps better than — anything I have pro- 
duced; but I believe it is not immediately 
popular. Men are not flattered by being 
shown that there has been a difference of 
purpose between the Almighty and them. 
To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny 
that there is a God governing the world. It 
is a truth which I thought needed to be told, 
and as whatever of humiliation there is in it 
176 



falls most directly on myself, I thought others 
might afford for me to tell it. — Letter to 
Thurlow Weed; March 15, 1865. 

THERE are but few aspects of this great 
war on which I have not already ex- 
pressed my views by speaking or writing. 
There is one — the recent effort of "our er- 
ring brethren," sometimes so called, to em- 
ploy the slaves in their armies. The great 
question with them has been, "Will the negro 
fight for them?" They ought to know better 
than we, and doubtless do know better than 
we. I may incidentally remark that, having 
in my life heard many arguments — or strings 
of words meant to pass for arguments — 
intended to show that the negro ought to be 
a slave — if he shall now really fight to keep 
himself a slave, it will be a far better argu- 
ment why he should remain a slave than I 
have ever before heard. He, perhaps, ought 
to be a slave if he desires it ardently enough 
to fight for it. Or, if one out of four will, for 
his own freedom, fight to keep the other three 
in slavery, he ought to be a slave for his sel- 
fish meanness. I have always thought that 
all men should be free; but if any should be 
slaves, it should be first those who desire it 
for themselves, and secondly those who desire 
it for others. Whenever I hear any one argu- 
ing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see 
it tried on him personally. — Remarks to an 
Indiana Regiment; March 17, 1865. 
12 177 



BY these recent successes the reinaugura- 
tion of the national authority — recon- 
struction — which has had a large share of 
thought from the first, is pressed much more 
closely upon our attention. It is fraught with 
great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between 
independent nations, there is no authorized 
organ for us to treat with — no one man has 
authority to give up the rebellion for any 
other man. We simply must begin with and 
mold from disorganized and discordant ele- 
ments. Nor is it a small additional embar- 
rassment that we, the loyal people, differ 
among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and 
measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, 
I abstain from reading the reports of attack's 
upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by 
that to which I cannot properly offer an an- 
swer. In spite of this precaution, however, 
it comes to my knowledge that I am much 
censured for some supposed agency in setting 
up and seeking to sustain the new State gov- 
ernment of Louisiana. . . . 

We all agree that the seceded States, so 
called, are out of their proper practical rela- 
tion with the Union, and that the sole object 
of the government, civil and military, in re- 
gard to those States is to again get them into 
that proper practical relation. I believe that 
it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to 
do this without deciding or even considering 
whether these States have ever been out of 
the Union, than with it. Finding themselves 

178 



safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial 
whether they had ever been abroad. Let us 
all join in doing the acts necessary to restor- 
ing the proper practical relations between 
these States and the Union, and each forever 
after innocently indulge his own opinion 
whether in doing the acts he brought the 
States from without into the Union, or only 
gave them proper assistance, they never hav- 
ing been out of it. . . . 

Now, if we reject and spurn them [Louisi- 
anans asking for State government under the 
Union], we do our utmost to disorganize and 
disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white 
man: You are worthless or worse; we will 
neither help you, nor be helped by you. To 
the blacks we say : This cup of liberty which 
these, your old masters, hold to your lips we 
will dash from you, and leave you to the 
chances of gathering the spilled and scattered 
contents m some vague and undefined when, 
where, and how. If this course, discouraging 
and paralyzing both white and black, has any 
tendency to bring Louisiana into proper prac- 
tical relations with the Union, I have so far 
been unable to perceive it. If, on the con- 
trary, we recognize and sustain the new gov- 
ernment of Louisiana, the converse of all this 
is made true. We encourage the hearts and 
nerve the arms of the 1 2,000 to adhere to their 
work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, 
and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and 
ripen it to a complete success. The colored 
179 



man, too, in seeing all united for him, is in- 
spired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, 
to the same end. Grant that he desires the 
elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner 
by saving the already advanced steps toward 
it than by running backward over them? 
Concede that the new government of Louisi- 
ana is only to what it should be as the egg is 
to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by 
hatching the egg than by smashing it. — 
Speech on Reconstruction; April ii, 1865. 



180 



INDEX 

[Note: L. is the abbreviation of Lincoln.] 

Abolition. See Slavery. 

Agriculture, advantages of thorough cultivation, 89, 94 ; 
agricultural fairs a social bond, 89. 

Alton, 111., debate with Douglas at, 72. 

Army, The (for Negro soldiers, see Slavery), on 
military dictatorship, 156; L. disparages contention 
about rank, 140, 158 ; instigators of desertion worthier 
of punishment than deserters, 160; draft is constitu- 
tional, 163 ; triumphs of, 165 ; soldiers consecrate 
their lives, 166. 

Baltimore, Md., remarks at sanitary fair in, 168. 

Banks. See Finance. 

Baptists, letter to committee of, 169. 

Bible, The, all sufficient for present and future life, 
171. 

Bixby, Mrs., letter to, 173. 

Bloomington, 111. .speech before First Republican Con- 
vention at, 43. 

Border State Representatives, appeal to, 141. 

Browning, O. H., letter to, 134. 

Buchanan, James, accepts doctrine of" State equality," 
47; conspirator in re Dred Scott decision, 53. 

Canisius, Dr. Theodore, letter to, 80. 

Capital. Si>e Labor. 

Cass, Lewis, burlesque of his military career, 21. 

Charleston, L)., debate with Douglas at, 65. 

Chicago, 111., speech at Republican banquet in, Dec. 

10, 1856,46; speech at, July 10, 1858, 54; remarks 

to representatives of churches in, 145. 
Christian Commission, L. endorses, 157. 
Cincinnati, O., speech at, Sept. 17, 1859, 83 ; remarks 

to Germans at, Feb. 12. 1861, 117, 

181 



Clay, Henry, eulogy of, 25 ; in favor ol gradual eman- 
cipation, 25, 40. 

Clinton, III., speech at, 6i. 

Columbus, O., speech at, 82. 

Condolence, letter of, to Miss Fannie McCullough, 
153; letter of, to Mrs. liixby, 173. 

Congress, speech in, on President Polk, 15 ; speech in, 
on internal improvements, 16 ; speech in, on military 
heroes, 20. 

Conkling, James C, letter to, 164. 

Constitution, The. See Slavery. 

Cooper Union, New York, speech at, 104. 

Corning, Erastus, and others, letter to, 160. 

Crittenden, J. J., letter to, 76. 

Declaration of Independence {see also Slavery), 
enemies of, 78 ; valid for all time, 79 ; L. would be 
assassinated rather than give up its principles, 122 ; 
hope of the country and the world, 122. 

Delahay, M. W., letter to, 79. 

Democratic Party {see also Douglas, Stephen A.), 
Whigs contrasted with Democrats, 4; in New York 
an "equally divided gang of hogs," 21; has ex- 
changed coats with Republican party, 77 ; puts dollar 
before the man, 77; bushwhacking tactics of, in. 

Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements, lecture 
on, 96. 

Divine Will, meditation on the, 150. 

Douglas, Senator Stephen A., L. attacks his popular 
sovereignty theory, 34 ; L. replies to him at Spring- 
field, June 26, 1857, 48 ; his version of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, 50 ; conspirator in re Dred 
Scott decision, 53 ; L. replies to him at Chicago, 
July 10, 1858, 54 ; L. contrasts himself with, 59 ; de- 
bate with L. at Jonesboro, 62 ; debate with L. at 
Charleston, 65 ; debate with L. at Quincy, 70; debate 
with L. at Alton, 72; dangerous enemy of liberty, 
81 ; contrasted with Jefferson, 82 ; L. denounces 
his paralell between negro and crocodile, 83, 84, no. 

Dred Scott Decision. See Slavery. 

Durley, Williamson, letter to, 11. 

Education, basis of enduring prosperity, 93, 95. 
Edwardsville, 111., speech at, 6i. 
Emancipation. See Slavery. 
Emancipation Proclamation, Preliminary, 149. 

Fashion, influence of, 6 

Fast Day, proclamation of, March 30, 1863, 158. 

182 



Finance, L. in candidacy for Illinois legislature an- 
nounces himself in favor of national bank, i ; L. op- 
poses examination of State Bank without legislative 
authority, i ; tax on bank circulation, 154; necessary 
inequalities in taxation, 170. 

Fisher, C. H., letter to, 115. 

Fletcher, Governor Thomas C, letter to, 174. 

" Fooling the People," remark on, 61. 

Free Trade. See Tariff. 

Fremont, General John C, L. opposes his order of 
military emancipation, 135. 

Fugitive Slave Law. See Slavery. 

Galena, 111., speech at, 44. 

Galesburg, 111., debate with Douglas at, 66. 

Galloway, Samuel, letter to, 80. 

Gentry, Matthew (an insane friend of L.), poem on, 13. 

Gettysburg, Pa., dedication of National Cemetery at, 
166. 

Government {see also Slavery), object of, to secure 
to labor its product, 9 ; notes on, 27 ; rests on public 
opinion, 46 ; central idea of, is human equality, 46 ; 
L. endorses principle of greatest good to greatest num- 
ber, 118; supreme control should be vested in one 
person, 136 ; liberty versus tyranny, 168 ; elections a 
necessity of free, 171. 

Greeley, Horace, letter to, 144. 

Gurney, Mrs., reply to an address by, 149. 

Hammond, J. H., his "mud-sill " theory, 90. 
Hirtford, Ct., speech at, 108. 
Henry, Dr. A. G., letter to, 76. 
Herndon, William H., letter to, 19- 
Homestead Law, L. endorses, 118. 
Hooker, General Joseph, letter to, 155. 
Hunter, General David, letter to, 140. 

Immigrants, no discrimination against, 80, 118. 

Inau:<ural Address, First, on March 4, 1861, 122. 

Inaugural Address, Second, on March 4, 1861, 175 ; L.'s 
comments on, 176. 

Indiana Legislature, remarks to, 177. 

Indiana Regiment, remarks to an, 177. 

Indianapolis, Ind., remarks at, 116. 

Internal Improvements, L. in candidacy for Illinois 
legislature announces himself in favor of, i ; speech in 
Congress on, June 20, 1848, 16; reply to charge of 
inequality in, 17; absurdity of paying for them with 
tonnage duties, 18. 

183 



Invention, Adam an inventor, 97 ; of speech, g8 ; of 
writing, 100 ; of printing, 102 ; aided by discovery of 
America, 104 ; aided by patent laws, 104. 

Jackson, Andrew, Democracy's sole Presidential ma- 
terial, 20. 

Jefferson, Thomas, letter to Jefferson Dinner Commit- 
tee of Boston, on, 76 ; contrasted with Stephen A. 
Douglas, 82. 

Johnson, Governor Andrew, letter to, 158. 

Johnston, William, letter to, April 18, 1846, 11; letter 
to, Sept. 6, 1846. 

Jonesboro, 111., debate with Douglas at, 62. 

Know-nothing, L. not a, 43. 

Labor {see also Government, Slavery), gives title to 
product, 9 ; in relation to tariff, 9 ; free, versus slave, 
27, 86, 90, 114; relation to capital, 90, 137; Ham- 
mond's " mud-sill " theory, 90, 93 ; strikes justifiable, 
113; workingmen the basis of all governments, 117; 
wanting to work should be encouraged, 136, 170; 
workingmen should cherish their political rights, 139 ; 
solidarity of English and American laborers, 154 ; re- 
lation to property, 168. 

Law, notes for a lecture on, 23. 

Leavenworth, Kans., speech at, 95. 

Lewiston, 111., speech at, 60. 

Lincoln, Abraham, poem on, by Lowell, vii ; considers 
himself an old man, 19 ; in Black Hawk war, 20 ; as a 
lawyer, 23 ; as a hired laborer, 27, 114 ; personal ex- 
penence with slavery, 42 ; still a Whig, Aug. 24, 
1855, 42 ; votes for Wilmot proviso, 42 ; not a Know- 
Nothing, 43 ; contrasts himself with Douglas, 59 ; 
avows his high motives in senatorial contest, 60 ; his 
feelings upon defeat for Senate, 76 ; youthful im- 
pressions on reading Weems's Washington^ 121 ; his 
trust in Providence, 149, 150. 

Louisiana, reconstruction in, 178. 

Lowell. James Russell, poem on L., vii. 

Madison, James, avows word slave ought not to appear 
in Constitution, 43. 

McCullough, Miss Fannie, letter to, 153. 

Manchester, England, letter to workingmen of, 154. 

Message to Congress, in special session, July 4, i8'y, 
126; First Annual, Dec. 3, 1861, 136; Second An- 
nual, Dec. I, 1862, 151; on U. S. notes, Jan. 1.7, 
1863, 154. 

184 



Mexican War, President Polk responsible for, 15; vio- 
lates Golden Rule, 16. 

Military Heroes, speech in Congress on, 20. 

Missouri Compromise (see also Slavery); speech on re- 
peal of, 29. 

Mob Law, L. opposes, i, 2. 

Nebraska. See Slavery. 

Negro, The (sec also Slavery), address to negro dele- 
gation, Aug. 14, 1862, 142; remarks on Bible to negro 
delegation, Sept. 7, 1864, 171. 

New Haven, Ct., speech at, in. 

New Jerse}', remarks to Senate of, 121. 

New York City, speech at Cooper Union, Feb. 27, i860, 
104; remarks at, Feb. 20, 1861, 120; remarks to com- 
mittee of workiiigmen of, 168. 

Niagara Falls, notes for lecture on, 22. 

Ohio Democrats, letter to committee of, 160. 
Ohio Regiment, remarks to the 164th, 170. 

Paris, 111., speech at, 61. 

Peck, J. M., letter to, 16. 

Peoria, 111., speech on repeal of Missouri Compromise 

at, 29. 
Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, address on, 2. 
Persuasion, the honey that catches flies, 5, g. 
Philadelphia, Pa., remarks in Independence Hall, Feb. 

22, 1861, 122. 
Pickett, George E., letter to, 8. 
Pierce, Franklin, conspirator in re Dred Scott decision, 

53- 

Pittsburg, Pa., remarks at, 118. 

Poems, " My childhood's home I see again," 11 ; " But 
here's an object more of dread," 13. 

Polk, James K., speech in Congress arraigning, 15 ; re- 
ply to position of, on internal improvements, 17. 

Protection. See Tariff. 

President, The, note on the proper policy of, 19. 

Printing, invention of, 102. 

Public Opinion, government rests on, 46. 

Quincy, 111., debate with Douglas at, 70. 

Ramsey, Major, note to, 136. 

Reconstruction, speech on, 178. 

Reed, Alexander, letter to, 157. 

Republican Party, speech before first convention of, in 

Illinois, 43 ; contrasted with Democratic party, 77; 

not sectional, 104. 

185 



Revolution of 1776 compared with temperance revolu- 
tion, 7. 

Richmond Enquirer, The, invents phrase " State 
equality," 47. 

Robertson, George, letter to, 40. 

Rosecrans, General William S., letter to, 158. 

Secession. See Union, The. 

Seymour, Governor Horatio, letter to, 163. 

Sharpe, H. D., letter to, 76. 

Slavery {see also Democratic Party; Government; 
Labor ; Union, The ; Republican Party), abolition of, 
conjoined with temperance reform, 8 ; duty of free 
States to let it alone in slave States, and to resist its 
extension into Territories, 11; Henry Clay in favor 
of gradual emancipation, 25 ; L. denounces extremists 
on either side of question, 26; opposed to natural 
justice, 28, 29, 30; extension into Territories, 29; 
opposed to Declaration of Independence, 29, 40; 
Northern responsibility for, 30; inadequacy of depor- 
tation of negroes to remedy, 31 » L. tolerates Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, 31; territorial extension of, would 
justify African slave-trade, 32, 81 ; humanity of the 
negro, 32 ; Southerners despise the slave-dealer, 33 ; 
government of another is despotism, 34, 61, 74 ; con- 
stitutional relations of, 35, 87, 112; comparison of 
Maine and South Carolina, 35 ; territorial extension 
of, a source of strife between North and South, 37, 
72 ; foreign view of American, 39; failure of gradual 
emancipation in Kentucky, 40 ; renders Fourth of 
July meaningless, 40 ; hopeless condition of the Ameri- 
can slave, 41 ; "Can the nation continue half slave 
andhalf free?" 41 ; L.'s experience with, 42 ; L. votes 
for Wilmot Proviso, 42 ; Madison avows word slave 
ought not to appear in Constitution, 43 ; North will 
not, and South shall not disrupt the Union, 44, 45, 
95, 106 ; Unionist weaklings, 46 ; human equality 
central idea of our government, 46, 47; " State equal- 
ity," invention of Southerners, 47; marrying a black 
woman, 48, 55, 65 ; meaning of the Declaration of 
Independence, 48, 56, 57, 60, 69, 74 ; Republican 
view of, contrasted with Democratic, 51, 67; "A 
house divided against itself," 52 ; the conspiracy /« r^ 
Dred Scott decision, 52 ; " squatter sovereignty," 54, 
61, 71, 81, 85 ; Douglas's construction of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, 57, 66; Douglas's doctrine of 
unfriendly legislation to exclude slavery from Terri- 
tories, 62, 71, 75; Jefferson's view of, 66; Douglas's 
view of, 67, 74 ; L's view of, 69, 74 ; the Fathers' 

186 



view of, 70, 105, III ; the cotton-gin and, 71 ; Dred 
Scott decision annihilates popular sovereignty, 72 ; 
Douglas an abolitionist, 75 ; Southern man on Repub- 
lican ticket, 79, 88 ; no compromise on extension of, 
in Republican platform, 79 ; L. objects to radical 
Oliio Republican platform, 80; L. denounces Doug- 
las's parallel between negro and crocodile, 83, 84, 
no; free labor versus slave, 86, 115; Hammond's 
" mud-sill " theory, 90 ; sophistical pleas of its advo- 
cates, 107; vested interests in, 108; L. endorses 
Seward's phrase, "irrepressible conflict," 109 ; the 
snake in the Union bed, no, 115; no struggle be- 
tween white man and negro, no; not a necessity, 
115; futility of repeating assurances not to interfere 
with, in States, ns; freedom the people's fight, 116; 
L. opposes Fremont's order of military emancipation, 
13s; L. offers compensated emancipation with colon- 
ization to border States, 141 ; L. urges colonization 
as duty upon intelligent negroes, 142 ; Divine 
guidance in question of, 145 ; advantages and 
disadvantages of emancipation, 146 ; Preliminary 
Emancipation Proclamation, 149 ; L. recommends 
compensated emancipation to Congress, 152 ; right- 
ousness of emancipation, 152, ifig ; on arming ne- 
groes, 158, 165, 166, 177; hypocrisy of its advocates, 
169 ; war, God's judgment on, 175 ; the ballot, a 
reward to negro for effort, 180. 

Speech, invention of, 100. 

Speed, Joshua F., letter to, 42. 

Speer, William S., letter to, 115. 

Springfield, 111., speech against the Van Buren adminis- 
tration at, 4 ; address to Washingtonian Society at, 5 ; 
reply to Douglas, June 26, 1857, at, 48 ; speech at, 
accepting nomination for Senator, June 16, 1858, 52 ; 
speech at, July 17, 1858, 59; lecture on Discoveries, 
Inventions, and improvements, before Library Ass'n 
of, 96; letter to James C. Conkling read at Union 
meeting in, 164. 

Taney, Roger B., conspirator in re Dred Scott decision, 

S3- 
Tariff, L. in candidacy for Illinois legislature announces 

himself in favor of a high protective tariff, i ; notes on 

protection, jotted down while Congressman-elect, 

Dec. 1847, 9 ; protection abolishes useless labor of 

transportation, 9, 119. 
Temperance, address to Washingtonian Society of 

Springfield, 111., Feb. 22, 1842, 5; letter to George E. 

Pickett on, 8 ; conjoined with abolition of slavery, 8. 

187 



Union, The (see also Slavery), in relation to slavery, ii; 
not a fjee-love arrangement, ii6; parallel between 
State and county, 1 17 ; the crisis of secession artificial, 
118 ; save the Union ship and cargo, 120; shall be 
preserved, 121, 124, 144; perpetuity of, 122 ; secession 
the essence of anarchy, 124 ; absurdity of secession, 
125 ; responsibility for war rests on secessionists, 126 ; 
sentiment for, 126; nature of "sovereignty," 127; 
States not sovereign, 127; conspiracy of secessionists, 
129; ability of Union soldiers, 131; war for, a test of 
popular government, 132, 133; impossible to compro- 
mise with secessionists, 134; prophecy of glorious 
future for, 140; secession springs from men, not land, 
151 ; war has justified, 171. 

Vallandigham, Clement L. See Ohio Democrats. 
Van Buren, Martin L., speech against administration 
of, 4. 

War, The {see also Army, The ; Slavery ; Union, The), 
L. advocates neighborhood meetings in Missouri to 
heal partisan strife, 174 : healing the wounds ot, 176. 

Washington, George, tribute to, 8 ; Life of, by Weems, 
impressed L. in youth, 121. 

Washingtonian Society, address before, 5. 

Weed, Thurlow, letter to, 176. _ 

West Virginia, opinion on admission of, into Union, 153. 

Whig Party, contrasted with Democratic, 4 ; passing of 
the, 42 

Wihiiot Proviso. See Slavery. , ^ o 

Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair, address before, 89. 

Writing, invention of, 102. 

Young America, character of, 96. 
Young Men, advice to, 19. 



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